The Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 3
by Kojiokida2
Summary: Kain is gone, lost beyond the rim of time. Now the Hylden strive to conquer a dead Nosgoth. Freed from the endlessly cycling curse of the Soul Reaver, Raziel must strive against the very people who think him a messiah. Sequel to Blood Omen 3 Finished
1. Freedom

(First of I'd like to give a big thank you to all of you to so positively reviewed the prequel to this story, Blood Omen 3. I'm glad you all liked it so much. It took me a while but now we get into the second chapter of my Legacy of Kain saga epic. But like I said in chapter one of BO3, don't expect closure here. I plan on at least another 2 stories before I'm done. This is the big writing project for me boys and girls. Please by all means give plot suggestions in reviews. And of course, PLEASE read Blood Omen 3 before reading this story. thank you)

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"_**Executed, tortured, imprisoned, dispersed… there is no pain which I have not endured. No torment which can be devised that I have not already been through. And yet I still live.**_

_**Paradoxically, impossibly, invigoratingly; I still live.**_

_**I stood the test of the Reaver and I prevailed. Am I indestructible? Is it possible for me to die? I am not sure I wish to test my hypothesis and have it set in stone one way or the other.**_

_**The hour is late and I stand on the cusp of yet another new eon, a fresh chance to correct the mistakes I have made.**_

_**I am Raziel and once more… I live."**_

-

-

-

The banners of the six clans hung from iron railings around the central room newly constructed Sanctuary, the first castle of the emerging Empire. The Pillars had been claimed by the vampires and the humans who had converted this place driven off, unworthy as they were to behold the seat of power for the land.

Sitting on his rightful throne was the ruler of the world, whose armies even now extended across Nosgoth crushing all in their path, uniting the land under the banner of the new emperor; Kain.

He sat there on his newly fashioned throne of obsidian rock, set around the base of the Pillar of Balance itself, one hand resting on the pommel of his dread sword, the Soul Reaver. The gold armour he wore had been adapted several times to accommodate his changing body as it underwent evolution in the state of change. Four hundred years since he had brought down the last human rule of Nosgoth, the Sarafan, his body was ascending to the divine. His fingers were already replaced by talons, his body toned and skin tough like leather. Around his hair line were a small set of developing spur like horns like some natural crown.

Standing before him, their heads inclined to him in deep respect and reverence were the six, the raised vampires whom Kain called his sons.

There was Melchiah the youngest, whom sadly had received less than a fair share of the dark gift, his face blemished by the scars were his flesh was tearing.

Beside him was Zephon, whose strange angular features and slicked back black hair made him unique among his brothers as did his perhaps unhealthy fascination with insect life.

Rahab was to the right, the most anti social of them all, who spoke only when spoken to and seemed distant and out of place, like a fish out of water.

Dumah stood proud and erect, his head bowed only slightly as if this was the own gesture of humility even his creator would receive.

Turel, who was the butt of many a practical joke for his sensitive hearing, was by far the tallest of them all; his face constantly set into a rigid and grim expression. Out of all of them he was by far the most dutiful and constantly on watch for even the slightest insult that might be directed towards his sire.

The eldest and the dearest of them all was the nearest, who stood there confident and content in the presence of his sire. Raziel's handsome face was framed by the bangs of his raven black hair.

All of them were vampires who were just coming into their maturity, their fingers almost talons but not quite. The set practise of procreation within the imperial vampires was that one created six, who in turn when on to sire another six and so on multiplying the numbers of the clan by six for every one each time. In this way they had each become a father in their own right to many vampires, long before many sires before them.

Currently the topic of discussion in the imperial council was the war effort.

Despite the vampire presence in the city, Meridian had been the hardest nut to crack of any city in all the human kingdoms. Its left over remnant of the Sarafan army formed its garrison and the city had endured. Its supplies had been cut of and before long they would be forced to surrender or starve.

Kain received intelligence from the front only half heartedly, his attention somewhere else more often than not.

Their sire had the peculiar habit of sitting for hours on end lost in thought. Kain had a reputation for causal savage brutality and indeed it was well earned by the sadistic methods of his rule, even by vampire standards. But more and more the ruler of Nosgoth was to be fond wrapped up in his thoughts, as if he were contemplating something he cared not to discuss with any of them.

"And if I might beg your indulgence, master…" Raziel began again, hoping to break his contemplation with something of importance. Kain blinked and then looked directly at his eldest son with a raise eyebrow.

Raziel stood back up and set his face into a triumphant grin.

"Your rival..." He paused then and quickly corrected himself. "…your upstart; has been brought low."

Kain looked up with a frown. Raziel side stepped and turned to face the door to the chamber.

"Bring him in." He called to the guards, vampires of his own clan who bore the banner of the Razielim. They both nodded in unison and moved to push open the door to the central chamber.

As the doors swung open, in marched a precession of troops in triumph escorting between two ranks of legionnaires a single figure.

Kain's eyes widened slightly and he sat up straighter on his throne at the spectacle before him, now fully diverted from his mental wanderings.

Since the rise of the empire, the vampires had been subconsciously divided into two factions, those who descended from Kain and those who belonged to the Cabal, the second race of vampires sired by another.

And now that other was being taken before the Emperor in chains. Vorador, the eldest living vampire. Only Janos Audron himself was of more dark prestige.

Vorador had refused to recognise the authority of the Emperor and for this he had been pursued across Nosgoth by the legions.

Kain's lips pursed as his face adopted his usual grim expression when he took when attending to official business. He did not seem overly surprised to see Vorador being led towards him this way.

His head hung low, the ancient vampire was directly to the centre of the Pillars and then forcibly made to kneel before the Emperor.

"We have the Cabal vampires awaiting execution, sire." Raziel said, turning to look at Kain who was slowly rising from his seat. "You need only say the word and you become the father of all vampires in Nosgoth."

Kain did not immediately answer but walked up to Vorador and stood over him, looking down at the top of the ancient's hung head.

Silence endured, dragging on for minute after minute and the guards on either side of Vorador began to look a tad nervous.

Then Vorador lifted his head and met Kain's gaze. His golden eyes were filled with a deep anguish and pain that made even the six lieutenants momentarily flinch as his gaze struck them all.

"So Kain…" He began in a low tone, his eyes half lidded. "You have the empire you craved for so long." Slowly his gaze wandered around the chamber, seeing the imperial banners of each clan and smiling ironically at them. "You remake this damned world in your image."

"I do." Kain said simply. "Do you blame me for it?"

Vorador, even so broken inside, maintained his sense of humour and chuckled lightly to some private joke.

"For that… no." Then he looked up at Kain, his gaze lingering on the evolved differences that his body had undertaken. "You took from me the last fragments of family I had left on this decomposing planet."

"I did." The Emperor said again without emotion. "And I feel absolutely no remorse for it."

Vorador managed a smile.

"Not now perhaps." He said; a strange satisfaction in his tone. "But one day you will regret it with every fibre of your being, of that I am certain. For that coming horror I will pity you more than hate you."

Briefly, there was a haunted look in the Emperor of Nosgoth's eyes but it passed and he straightened.

"I could have you killed right now and the Cabal destroyed…leaving me deified amongst my kin as the creator of all." He declared wistfully.

On this statement he paused, lingering on the tempting thought but then some other thoughts soured it and made him frown even deeper. He shook his head and walked back to his throne.

"But if I did, then I would be sinking a dagger into my soul which I would never be able to remove."

His six sons looked at him with clear surprise on their faces. Even the Razielim guards looked a tad confused at the words of their emperor.

Vorador kept his gaze fixed on Kain and Kain stared right back in turn.

"I will spare the Cabal, and you. But do not be simple in believing that this is some act of benevolence." He said, faintly disgusted. "I do it to prove Umah wrong."

Vorador flinched slightly at the mention of that name, although none of the six knew precisely who they were referring to.

"That was why she stole that stone from me." Kain carried on. "Because she feared I would view the Cabal as nothing more than another obstacle to my rise to power. If I kill you and your kin I will be hearing her words echo within my mind and soul from now until the end of days."

The look of disgust on his face was enough to tell that he was not prepared to entertain that idea.

"As such… my judgement upon you is that you and the Cabal will be exiled from the Empire." He swept his arm across his chest dismissively. "You will be taken to a remote landmass, far from the southern shore. You will have supplies and enough humans to harvest in a suitable crop. There you and your ilk will remain until I see fit to reinstate you as imperial citizens."

The unlikelihood of that event made the sentence as good as a permanent banishment.

Vorador simply set his expression into a flat emotionless stare when he heard the pronouncement.

"One day Kain... you will come to me on this island and during that hour we will settle the argument between us with its true tragedy known to us both."

The Emperor snorted and inclined his head sharply in a gesture to his sons.

"Raziel, your clan will escort him and his kin to their new home." He declared and his eldest son thumped his chest with a fist across his heart. "And ensure that they remain there."

"Are you command, sire." He said.

Vorador was turning to be led away b the guards but then stopped in mid step, his ears going suddenly erect.

"Raziel?" He repeated, suddenly awe clear in his tone. "Raziel!" Quickly he turned his head to look at the face of Kain's eldest creature and as their eyes met, the memory swung away from cohesion and Raziel started from yet another uncontrollable bout of recall.

-

"_**Memories, events that shaped by entire existence flowed before him like an undulated sea. With no linear frame to guide them I swung from past to present and back again, unable to focus."**_

-

He had no idea how long he had been lying there on the cold stone, unable to tell memory from real time. He swung back and forth from the days of his fledgling training to the quest that plunged from through the time streams in his futile attempt to find some way of escaping the fate of the Reaver.

-

"_**The Reaver… the Soul Reaver…" **_

-

As if mention of the blade in the vaults of his mind was like key in a lock, panic overwhelmed him and he scrambled from the floor. Wildly, his eyes glared around the ruins that had once been his own castle and capital of the Razielim clan. The dirty, rotting banners that bore the clans symbol still hung from the walls in a few places. The crumbled remains of a statue that had once stood there displaying his handsome face to the world had been reduced to the stumps of a pair of feet.

It was raining, a thick sheet of water coming down across the stone courtyard in which he had been lying.

Raziel paid no heed to any of it, his attention fixed on the palm of the right hand he held out in front of himself. Cohesion slowly came back to him and he remembered clearly now what mention of the Reaver blade meant to him.

His other hand went to his chest where he now remembered the blade had been lodged as he had…

His eyes widened and he shuddered at the recollection, blessed by the fact he could remember nothing after that.

"This…" He began blinking somewhat foolishly at his hand out in front of him. "This can not be…"

His eyes wandered down across his body, seeing him as he knew himself to me; blue scorched skin, near skeletal form with the welcoming cowl that had once been his clan's banner across his shoulders and face. The remains of his ruined wings hung from his back.

It was as if his consumption had been nothing but a dream and he just woke up.

An idea formed in his mind and Raziel began to breath hard as an impossible hope surged through his being. His hand trembling before him, he urged the wraith blade to manifest itself.

It did not.

As Raziel's mind began to grasp this possibility he reached out with his thoughts, trying to sense that presence that had been with him since the blade had bonded to him.

There was nothing there.

Slowly, he began to chuckle. Again and again he tried to summon the wraith blade and each time he failed the sound of his laughter increased. By the twentieth time that the blade had failed to respond Raziel was laughing hysterically.

He tumbled backwards and fell back down on the floor again, letting the rain fall on him as he laughed. His hand still held up in the air above his face, confirming the inertness of his weapon over and over.

Jubilant and ecstatic, Raziel lay there as he brought to himself the only conclusion to be drawn from this.

-

"_**I dared only belief this is my wildest fantasies; a lewd and deceptive impossibility. But there could be no denying what the absence of the Reaver from my arm meant."**_

-

If Raziel had still be capable of crying he would have, his laughter leaving him lying there in the rain weak and tired.

-

"_**The curse of the Soul Reaver was lifted from me. I…. was free." **_


	2. Rejection

The jubilation did not last beyond the immediately digested fact of his freedom as Raziel soon began to see the ghosts.

'Ghosts' was the only word to describe them. They were not souls of the dead he would have known that immediately but were images, like a painting brought to life before his eyes.

The people around him were more than familiar to him for he had lived with them for over a thousand years, vampires all of them bearing the banner and mark of the Razielim clan.

Raziel wandered the castle where he had once held sway, seeing a strange double image as he observed. All at one time he saw the ruined walls and fallen masonry of the present but simultaneously he observed the proud battlements, fresh banners and hallways filled with young fledglings that he recalled.

-

**_"The faces of all those who had lived here were like shadows, free floating through these ruins I had never beheld their massacre and so, I knew that the images that appeared before me of horrible mutilation and fiery torment could be but my own imagination taking form."_**

**_-_**

The imagery of the past shifted and changed and no matter which way Raziel turned, he was forced to observe the dead and dying. The spilt blood of fellow vampires, a near unthinkable taboo in Kain's empire, ran through the cracks in coddle stones. Corpses were pilled up high and set ablaze by warriors baring the mark of the Dumahim, the smoke of the dead roasting flesh rising high into the air. Raziel could smell or hear nothing, no screams of agony nor rich scent of blood. The entire spectacle was illusionary.

-

**_"I wandered, passing between past and present, always forcing myself back to the now. It was a struggle that took a great deal of will to endure." _**

**_-_**

Try as he might he could not help a sense of deeper guilt. They had been his charge and his responsibility and he had not been there when they had needed him the most. In fact, he had forgotten about them entirely even after he had learned of the massacre hardly even recalling their deaths beyond their immediate effect of enraging him more during his early crusade against Kain.

And even after that, his quest had become wholly selfish he was now forced to admit, focused only on his role in Nosgoth's destiny and how he might escape it.

Eventually he found his way to his central chamber where he had once held court with his elite clansmen. Once again his vision had that peculiar double flash to it as he saw past and present in once single look.

Time had reduced most of his chamber to rubble, the roof fallen in and the back fall had cracked down the centre to leave a panoramic view to the distant sooty horizon. From here, he could see the distant smoke stacks that had once been at the heart of the Turelim territory. These massive chimneys that had once belched the smoke that had blocked out the sun and darkened the world now stood there against the faint sunlight without so much as a rising whip.

Already the overcast sky was a good deal brighter than it had been before. The stacks must have ceased their bellowing smoke quite some time ago.

Slowly Raziel made his way over to the broken and forgotten seat and stared at it, his pale eyes narrowing. The, perhaps a tad whimsically, he sat down on it placing his hands on the familiar stone arm rests.

-

**_"Desperately I tried to stay in the depressing and drab present, where there was no spilled blood and merely old stones."_**

**_-_**

As he sat there, Raziel began to push away the suggesting images he was seeing from his mind. He was tired, both physically and mentally and wished to rest unburdened by their intrusion on his solitude.

Eventually self discipline won over and slowly but surely the images faded and the present became dominant over the past, colour fading and the grey prevailing. He also banished that feeling of guilt was well, driving it from him with a jealous passion.

With a vicious shake of his head, Raziel banished them completely from his eyes and let out a long sigh seeing his vision once again clear.

He sat there for a long time afterward staring off into space and concentrating on keeping his mind focused so that the images did not come back.

Dozens of questions distracted him from this meditative state and the lack of answers to them was arrogating.

The last thing he consciously remembered before awakening here was the startled and dismayed look on Kain's face as the Reaver consumed him. After that there was nothing but flashes of memory, mere images he could not understand like some hideous nightmare that his mind had mercifully not recorded.

How could he be free from the Reaver blade? He did not understand how such a thing was possible.

True enough he was jubilant and ecstatic over this miracle but it made no sense.

And where was Kain now? What of his clash with the False god that had been Raziel's master? What of the dark unspoken who had taken hold of Janos Audron?

Raziel let out another long sigh.

The questions were near endless and with no answers they served only to drive him to distraction. As such another form that could not be real began to manifest before him, but this one wholly unconnected with the former display.

Raziel stared at her in mute awe for a moment and then slowly rose back up to his feet at the flicking being that floated back and forth as if caught in breeze.

Ariel, the former Balance Guardian before Kain, was here.

She was as he knew her; a spectre devoid of flesh and bone and glowing faintly with the light of her own spectral energy.

But her face was a flux, morphing from the beautiful visage he had seen once before to the hideously scared norm that showed bone and back again.

Her lips moved as if she was speaking but Raziel heard no sound.

-

**_"She floated, unattached as every other illusion in my sight. I watched her in detachment, knowing that she could not be real."_**

**_-_**

He tried not to look at her but he could not tear hi eyes away, his gaze fixed on her face in whatever state it was in. She stared back at him in turn with unblinking eyes and in her gaze was all the sincere pity that Raziel never wanted nor received before. It made him feel the weight of all of the injustices done to him all at once and an unbearable weight of turmoil and dismay threatened to crush him from within.

But those eyes held his and her pity and compassionate understand was like a pair of hands helping him with all that weight.

-

**_"But at that moment I wished she was."_**

**_-_**

Slowly, involuntarily, his hand started to move towards her.

Then suddenly her image flickered and vanished, leaving him momentarily taken aback. There was now a sense of presence, a immediate intrusions physically and not just an illusion. At the front of the chamber there was a light shimmering and space itself began to distort around it, pushing something through from someplace else.

In preparation for an attack, Raziel crouched slow as was the best fighting style with his ruined frame with his talons out spread. Instinctually he went to summon the wraith blade and only at the last second did he recall that his weapon was gone.

Emerging out of a translocation was a woman, quite unlike any Raziel had ever seen before. She was tall and tan skinned, her short brown hair cropped back over her shoulders.

With her enlarged ears and bony structures along her back and shoulders she was clearly not human and Raziel had never seen a Vampire of her like before.

"Raziel, my Messiah." She began in a voice thick with a peculiar accent. "Hear me!" She actually dropped down to her knees before him and Raziel blinked in confusion.

"What… who are you?" He demanded, talons still raised and arched forward. His emotions were already tightly wound and he was ready to spring like a coiled snake.

"Please…" This woman began with his face down to the floor. "I beg your forgiveness."

The wraith stared at her incredulously and then slowly straightened back up.

"My what?" He arched with a raised eyebrow. "I do not even know how you are." He glanced again over her strange form, with oddly arranged limbs and bony back protrusions. At present he could not quite place where but he felt he had seen anatomy such as this before. "Or what you are."

"My true name is no moment, Raziel." She said standing back up as well, showing him her bright violet coloured eyes but maintaining a respectful incline of her body. She was dressed in little more than a few clothe and leather straps across her chest and a long oil clothe between her legs and another hung down behind her click a cloak, suspended by her bone like frame. "I am known simply as the Seer."

Raziel snorted and frowned at her.

"That is as unhelpful as it is annoying vague." He declared testily, then paused and his eyes narrowed even further. "And how did you know my name?"

The woman let out a short, incuriously laugh when he asked. "There is not a Hylden alive who does not know your name." She said and Raziel's eyes bulged. "Your name has been the only thing to give my kind any hope in their exile."

"Hylden?!" The wraith explained, taking an involuntary step backwards. Now he knew where he had seen those features before. He had observed them many times in the murals created by the Ancient Vampires and the anatomy was distinctive enough now that had been reminded.

If this woman was indeed a Hylden than she did not appear at all the deranged, demonic, almost gargoyle like as the murals had once depicted them. Obviously now the Ancients had depicted their enemies as feral evil looking beings in order to make their own heroes appear more herculean.

Still he was extremely wary in her presence and maintained a prudent distance; his perception of the enemy race perhaps still coloured a bit by Janos Audron prejudices.

"You are so desperately needed." The Seer was saying to him, her expression filled with conviction but at the same time a deep gnawing guilt. "And I did what I had to do to bring you back."

Raziel stared at her not quiet understanding what she meant for a moment but then he raised one eyebrow as her meaning became clear

"You are the one who freed me from the Reaver?" His tone was incredulous and highly sarcastic. He had learned the hard way never to take anything anyone said at face value.

"You freed yourself, my saviour." She told him ingratiatingly. "I know of the horror that awaited you at the direction of Moebius the Time Streamer." She spat the name out with the venom it deserved and Raziel mellowed slightly. If she hated Moebius as well she could not be all that bad.

"It was his intent for you to repeat that hideous circle of consumption forever." She explained. "Yet you prevailed against his machinations and in doing so destroyed yourself." The Hylden woman bowed low again. "You are the foretold, Redeemer and Destroyer."

Raziel did not practically like being called that

"Why must that phrase forever dog me?" He asked exasperatedly, letting his arms drop to his sides and cast her a sidelong glare.

"And what possible need could you have for my forgiveness?" He asked then, the thought only now just coming to him. "What have you done to me that warrants it?"

She actually seemed startled and confused by his question, her wide eyes blinking several times.

"Then… you do not know?" There was a great deal of tension in her voice and she swallowed hard. "What I did…"

Raziel stared at her hard. "If I did, would I be asking?"

The Hylden woman hesitated and looked as if she were about to take a step or two forward but at the last second decided against it and remained in her spot.

She set her face in a resigned but grim and firm expression. "In order to release you from your imprisonment inside the Scion of Balance, I had to betray him."

Raziel stared as well he might. She had confessed this to him almost in one go and it took him a moment to digest it. Imprisonment within the Scion of Balance? But he had been captured within the Reaver Blade… not Kain. He laid a hand on the side of his head as it suddenly began to throb.

"Betray…" He repeated lamely.

"Kain is gone." The seer said with a forced, straight face. "Perhaps dead."

-

**_The moment the words left her lips my mind plunged back once again into the past. But this vision before me was far stranger. I saw this strange woman through different eyes and in some different place and I felt an intense rage at the image._**

**_-_**

It was like watching theatre and performing on stage without trying. Raziel saw the Reaver in the hands of whichever character whose point of view he had commandeered, slashing away at a barrier of energy between him and the Seer. The Seer in the vision watched the frantic enraged attempt gravely and then watched through a glowing porthole behind her vanishing from sight.

Raziel clutched the sides of his head, feeling a deep compassionate rage building up in him.

-

**_"Kain… I was seeing this through Kain's eyes. These were not my memories that had been haunting me, but Kain's. And now I remembered."_**

**_-_**

The wraith brought his hands forward sharply and stared at them, recall perfectly clear now.

-

**_"In order to heal Kain of the mental poison that had tainted him his entire life I had dispersed the wraith blade into him and as that blade was in truth my own future self I had put myself into Kain's very being. I had joined with him in some unknown way, conscious within and on some level aware of what was happening."_**

-

Then with a quick motion he turned on the Seer, eyes blazing.

"You dare come to me asking for help after what you did?!" He was irrationally angry and was stalking towards her talons held ready.

"My saviour…" The Seer began, clearly alarmed as she backed off.

"I am no saviour of yours, harlot!" The wraith spat. "I should rip your throat out right here!" His arms and legs were tenses read to spring directly at her. "I sacrificed myself so that Kain could live. I put myself through hell a dozen times over for that one purpose, my entire destiny bent around it and then you undo all in a moment of treachery?

His arm drew back as he if intended to savagely rake her with his talons. The Seer gave him one terrified and startled look and then promptly disappeared; vanishing into the white flash of a translocation spell.

-

**_"She was right to flee. Had she remained it was possible that I would have flown at her with my bare talons. The memory of her betrayal of Kain was coloured through his perception and I had inherited that prejudice from him. So perhaps my reaction had not been entirely my own. Nevertheless she was ludicrous if she believed I would trust her after what she had done."_**

**_-_**

Raziel stared at the spot where she had been and then went back to his throne and sat back down, letting his ruined wings drape across the stone arm rest He sat there rejected for quite some time. Then when he finally became sick of his moping he looked back over his shoulder at the gap in the wall and the distant horizon visible through the hole.

-

**_"Still, her actions had left me once again in the land of the living. If I am to make any sort of start for myself, I must learn precisely what era I have awaked to."_**


	3. Serioli

Raziel did not precisely know what to do. Ever since his rebirth through the torment of the abyss he had had a purpose to keep him going. For the first time in a long while he was at a loss.

His old castle possessed several large towers and although most of them had fallen down, one remained and to the pinnacle of this he climbed to give himself a better view of Nosgoth.

From the stone edge he gazed out, seeing far in several directions. Once from this tower he had beheld the many cities states of Kain's empire ruled by the clans but time had withered them to comparable stumps. The only monuments still of colossal size were the distant smoke stacks. They had still been bellowing smoke when he had hunted his former brethren but between now and then, someone had shut them off and the distant red haze of the sun shone through the cloud.

Briefly he pondered how long it would take for the air to clear enough from the pollution to allow for the sunlight to return in full force. Or if perhaps with the extent of Nosgoth's corruption it might not.

-

**_"Although clearly I was back in the decayed future and the wrecked ruin of Kain's empire I could not say how or why. The Seer has vanished before she could offer me further explanation and I knew not whether I was now in a time before I killed Kain's lieutenants or after."_**

**_-_**

He stared off towards the east and frowned. On the horizon there was a softer glow, green in colour and twinkling like stars in the night sky. There was an almost unearthly quality to the light, so sickly and poisonous looking. That had certainly not been there the last time. This strongly suggested that he had come back to this era after he had left it.

Unable to help himself, Raziel turned partly to look down at the cliffs below his clan territory. The canyons carved by mighty rivers flooded into the gapping wound in the land that was the swirling whirlpool of the Abyss. Even from here he could hear its roaring as the waters swirled down into the darkness.

He suppressed a shudder at the memory of the agonising descent through the water, just as much for the fact that he knew what awaited at the bottom then for the horrific fall.

Deliberately Raziel looked away and noticed from this high vantage point the curved dome some distance off to the south east. He knew at once he was staring at the remains of the once might Sanctuary of the Clans. The wraith stared at the distant building for a moment before he nodded sharply once.

-

**_"There was only one way to find out. I would go to the Pillars. Surely there I might learn the state of affairs as they stand in Nosgoth."_**

**_-_**

There was little else he could do and little other place he could go in this era besides and he did not intend to wander the ruins of his clan's castle in lonely melancholy.

Raziel was tensing his body to a long glide when there was a loud shout from somewhere down below.

That exclamation was followed by the hollow echoing clang of steel of steel, the sound of a good many people and other noises like a sizzling twang that came in rapid succession.

**_"Not far distant I heard the familiar and unmistakable of battle."_**

Peering down off the edge of the tower, he could see some movement in the garrison that overlooked the edge of Melchiah's necropolis. Flickering shadows and flashes of green light came from the tight narrow corners there and from the look of it, several dozen people were involved in close fighting.

Deciding to investigate, Raziel griped his ruined wings and leapt off the edge. Without their bony structure his wings would never be capable of powered flight again but they served well enough to allow for an elegant gliding motion.

The Wraith came down on the top of a ruined building and scrambled to the edge of peer down. What he saw made him blink several times.

Below him were dozens of beings he had seen only personified in Janos Audron's person. They were all blue skinned and had long black feathery wings structuring out from their backs. They were dozens of them, men and women and warriors all armed with archaic axes and swords.

-

**_"This improbable scene before me was almost ludicrous. Winged ancients like Janos… all fighting for their lives against…"_**

**_-_**

Recently reminded of the anatomy of the enemy race by the Seer's visit, there could be no mistaking their attackers. They were all thin and lean, with bony arms and legs. A frill of bone sprouted from their heads to curve back almost protectively over their short necks. Their eyes all blazed with a contaminating green fire and these inner flames were somehow being channelled down through strange weapons they held in their elongated hands to be projected in deadly form at the Vampires.

-

**_"… against what could only be Hylden." _**

**_-_**

Unlike the Seer however these Hylden were hideously warped. The flesh around their faces was drawn up sharply against their skulls and their cheeks scared with severe stretch marks. While the Seer had been a bronze colour with chestnut hair, they were chalk white and bald completely.

If these were indeed the Hylden now finally before him, they outnumbered these winged ancients five to one and they had them pinned up inside the garrison's inner wall which was barely suitable for a siege.

One of these ancient warriors, a female armed with two short blades was struck across the shoulder by a fiery green projectile and sent sprawling to the ground trailing vapour.

"Ajatar!" A big male vampire cried out. He was armed with a golden, curved axe and was distinguishable from the rest of them by a raking scar across his face and nose. He rushed forward and shielded her from attack, sweeping his own wings forward as a shield. He paid for the heroism, the green projectiles searing his feathers as he dragged her back to the relative safety of a cluster of stone.

Raziel's reaction was immediate. With an acrobatic twist he somersaulted over the side of the building he was crouched upon and flew directly in amongst the attacking Hylden.

-

**_"I did not know precisely what urged me to come to their aid. The act was almost instinctive and in the heat of battle I did not have the luxury of time to dwell upon it." _**

**_-_**

One Hylden looked down and saw him crouching there ready to spring. He reared back in clear alarm.

"YOU!" He screamed in a guttural voice just before Raziel's talons tore through his throat. Blood spurted through the slash and he stumbled back against the side of a wall before slumping down, the green in the eyes fizzling to a spark before going out.

The other Hylden were turning around at his shout and Raziel wasted no words, leaping at the nearest one and slamming his talons through the skull and into the brain.

Over and over he felt the near overriding compulsion to summon the wraith blade but he forced himself to the battle with his bare hands along, knowing that he could not afford the hesitation when he tried to call the sword and it would not come.

The remaining Hylden had recovered from their initial surprise and had backed off to a distant to raise their weapons against him.

Raziel grabbed the twitching body of the Hylden he had just killed and swung it forward, using it as a shield against the barrage. With a surge of his mind he threw he corpse forward using the heightened powers of telekinesis he had taken from Turel and in that confused instant when they fired at the incoming body, he leapt over it high into the air.

He rolled across the ground and with talons lanced forward he slashed at the Hylden before him with the Perforate Carcass technique. Adapting the fighting style for use without the Reaver threw him off balance at first but he was quick to adapt and landed a vicious series of strokes across the Hylden's chest unless he wrenched the ribcage open in a cascading bloody spray.

Seeing their enemy engaged, the winged vampires being the skilled and experienced warriors they seemed to be, took immediate advantage of the distraction and charged. Meeting the surprised Hylden from the rear they cut into them with axes and swords, outdated and archaic weapons in this day and age but no less efficient.

Raziel stabbed his talons through the eye sockets of another enemy and as the life flowed from its body and its soul escaped into the ether, he drew down his cowl and the inner calling light from within drawing the soul in like water down a drain.

Its energy restored his spent strength and in response his eyes burned afresh with their white fire.

The Hylden were now baffled and confused, falling back and firing wildly in their quick retreat. They regrouped a little further off at the entrance to a large stone pavilion and the battered Vampire troops used the pause in the fighting to gather their own strength. Any of them were wounded badly and they showed signs of malnourishment.

The Wraith stood in between the two forces, a strikingly visual mixture of the two species it might seem to the casual observer. Shattered and sliced corpses lay at his feet, some of them his own victims but most fallen from the battle. Hylden lay fallen beside winged Vampire, their mixed blood flowing across the stones.

"Ansu, what is that beast?" One of them with gaunt cheeks asked, pointing a shaking talon in Raziel's direction.

The large Vampire warrior armed with a battle axe looked up from his tending of the female, squinting at Raziel with a deeply skeptical expression on his face but said nothing.

Raziel stared back at him for a moment and then he turned his back to glare at the Hylden.

They had been greatly reduced in number and did not look overly keen to charge again now they had lost their advantages. Clearly these were not frontline troops but merely scouts who did not have a lot of discipline and thus their battle spirit was easily broken.

Their leader, a taller example of their species with long ridges of bone running down the sides of both arms to form offensive ridges was glancing back and forth between the vampires and Raziel was if did not quite understand the change in situation.

"This is impossible…" He eventually said in his rasping voice and slowly shaking his bald head. "You can not be here!"

"Can I not?" Raziel asked with a whimsical air, one eyebrow raised. The improbability of his return to Nosgoth was causing others even more dismay than it did himself, he was satisfied to see.

"Destiny will not permit it!" The Hylden said in reply, his expression incredulously and confused. Raziel beheld their dismay with profound amusement. They were far more taken aback by his return than he himself had been as well they might have been. He was after all something of a mythical figure to the Hylden even if they had viewed him as little more than a tool to be used.

"And yet…" He said, spreading his arms wide and clicking his talons menacingly. "… here I am." He took a step forward, his movement boarding on the dramatic and the Hylden withdrew a step in response, fear written into their faces.

"Are you afraid of me?" Raziel asked narrowing his eyes and slowly reaching up and playing a hand on the edge of his cowl. He ran the edge of a talon across it as if contemplating pulling it down to feed. "You awaited my coming as a means to release your kind from the binding and yet you fear me? How curious."

Their leader held up his projectile weapon, holding it with a shaking head in Raziel's direction as the wraith slowly moved towards him.

"Do not come any closer!"

Raziel stopped and glared at them, contemptuous of the utterly useless gesture. Even if such weapons could cause harm to his physical body such injury would be fleeting in the long run. In reply to it he simply raise a talon and pointed it back.

"You will leave this place." He said in a low tone. "You will leave the ruins of my clan and never return."

The Hylden scouts stared at him with wide, frightened eyes. They looked ready to bolt at any moment. To tip them over the edge he stopped and glared at them with his eyes burning with their white inner fire.

"Be gone." He told them, his voice low and threatening and as cold as ice. The Hylden turned and fled, almost to a man, some of them even dropping their weapons in their haste to flee. Their leader remained rigid for a moment; face fixed in terror before finally he to turned and ran.

Raziel stared after them a moment watching them go. He could chase them down and kill them all but for some reason he did not feel like expending the effort. He knew that they would most likely carry news of his return back to their kind but he did not think that overly important now.

"Who…what are you?" A voice asked.

Raziel looked back over his shoulder to see that one of the winged ancients had come forward. It was the large one with the scar across his face. His hand rested prudently on the hilt of his large axe but not in a threatening fashion, as if he meant to swing it at any moment. The others had remained behind but watched from their safe distances, their own weapons held at the ready.

"I might ask you the same question." Raziel replied flatly, not in the mood to banter. He turned fully around and the ancient blinked and stared in morbid fashion at the ruined wraith before him. Raziel glared savagely at him so he looked back up to his face. "You're supposed to be extinct."

He did not mean that in the immediate sense and the warrior did not take it that way.

"Is that a fact?" He asked with a frown. "Well as you can see, we are not."

Raziel looked them all over sceptically. He refused to believe that ancients other than Janos had survived all the way to this time period unnoticed.

Then he took a closer look at the warriors face and suddenly out of nowhere, a name came to him.

"Ansu." He said and the ancient frowned.

"How did you know my name?" He asked, now the one suspicious. Raziel did not immediately answer as he did not know himself.

When he looked over at the other vampires he seemed to know them as well. The wounded female was Ajatar… and by her side was the younger Kralek. Was this more of the memories from Kain that he had inherited.

"I know not what you are creature." The warrior Ansu said, interrupting his confused thoughts. "But we have battled across time itself to get to this place and we have found no respite thus far. So I will be frank. Are you friend or foe?"

Raziel shook is head, not to deny either role but to clear his own thoughts.

"Lost." He said faintly. "And until I find myself again, I can not answer your question." Without waiting to hear what reply Ansu might care to give, Raziel abandoned the flesh of his physical body; allowing it to dissolve as he shifted back into the spirit world.

Just before Ansu vanished, he was wearing as astonished look on his face that was almost comical.

The world around him green tinted blue and green, physical forms shifting to elongated parodies of the physical world. The shift from one realm to another felt like flowing from solid to liquid, the sensation like a melting and quite familiar to him.

The world of the dead was a cold place but it never changed, frozen static forms and unchanging for all eternity.

Much like himself.


	4. Taunt

Raziel, being now a being that maintained his physical presence only at a cost, was far more adapted to the spectral realm and was able to cover much more ground in this dark and warped reality. He knew of course that he should not take this speed and familiar for granted as the longer he might spend in this place the more he would loose himself until he was little more sentient than a ravenous Sluagh.

As it was, it was not long before he cleared the limits of his former clan territory and struck out south heading towards the jagged cliffs that lined the horizon. So far he had encountered none of the entities that usually inhabited this place; no vampire wraiths, archons or sluagh. That disturbed him for some reason and he grew a little edgy as he carried on.

Eventually he came to the top of a large rocky crevice and from there the vista before him carried all the way to the distant horizon. What view there might have been however was deeply obscured by a thick blanket of clinging smog that had been all too common with the use of the smoke stacks.

What made Raziel frown however was the gaping maw in the ground below the cliff and the churning water that, even in the Spectral realm, cycled down over the stones to fall into the utter darkness beneath.

-

**_"And so once more I beheld the burning spiral that was the Abyss. It was into this very whirlpool that Kain had cast me so long ago now, allowing for my rebirth as the Reaver of Souls."_**

-

Raziel stared at it for a long while and found himself looking at it in a strangely detached manner. Always before the sight of it had given him a deep feeling of dread and anxiety, even before his execution had earned the fear. Now that emotion seemed lost and he regarded the whirlpool with distaste, but not agitation.

As such, he was able to note differences from his last sighting of it that made his frown deepen.

-

**_"This vortex however was not entirely as I remembered it. Clearly the yawning chasm had doubled in size and the far side was only a distant suggestion through the stagnant air."_**

-

The gaping maw of the abyss was like a wound in the land itself, the rivers that fed the whirlpool falling down from many carved valleys and crevices into the deep puncture and fall endlessly down and down into the dark. The edge where he had last stood as a full vampire was almost gone completely, its top fallen over and lying to one side, blocking the path of a water fall and forcing it to divert to either side.

-

**_"If this was some omen of the late hour to which I awoke it was not lost on me."_**

-

More than this however, there was a pulsing feeling coming from that ruined cliff. This sensation was familiar to him now as the call of empty flesh. Taking hold of his ruined wings, he leapt forward and slowly moved through the still air towards it. As he glided near, he could the ethereal gasses rising from the near broken corpse of a Dumahim vampire. It was lying on top of a rock outcrop and was stuck there by a long metal spear, stabbed directly through its heart.

Raziel recognised its make as one of those used by human Vampire hunters.

He landed nearby and perched over the body, examining it for a moment. It was suitable.

He closed his eyes and began to project himself. Slowly this spectral form disappeared, fading away to a faint blue glow that shifted down to feed into the body before it. The shift back to the physical world using this method always filled him with disgust, as he could feel the dead flesh he now occupied and its touch revolted him.

Raziel concentrated hard as the body rose up at his command, transforming as it began to scramble back to its feet.

With a surge the flesh almost dropped away into the blue skeleton wraith as it changed into his regular form.

Embarrassingly however, he found that he had forgotten the spear still jabbed through the chest of his new body. He tugged it free with little more than a grunt of discomfort and he tossed the weapon away indifferently.

The Sanctuary of the Clans and the Pillars themselves lay to the south and Raziel could already see the canyon that led to them from here.

He was about to turn and head in that direction when suddenly, a deep, familiar and wholly unwelcome voice echoed out at him from the depths of the abyss.

"Hold Raziel! Go no further!" The command of the Elder, the oracle god of the ancient vampires halted him in his tracks. He stiffened, shoulders hunching together as he turned to look down into the darkness.

"You…" He began with appropriate venom.

Raziel could almost see within those deep shadows, some undulating thing lurking down there. A deep, squirming mass of tentacles writhing like a pitcher full of earthworms, each limb covered with blue staring eyes.

"As impossible as it seems..." The elder began, meeting Raziel's own contempt with a wealth of his own. "You stand here within my sight, freed of the captivity you so foolishly flung yourself into on Kain's behalf."

A momentary shudder travelled involuntarily down Raziel's body as he recalled that moment of impalement he had allowed to happen so that he might purify Kain's sight. It had been necessary of course but that knowledge had hardly made the act any more pleasant.

"I am not so arrogant that I refuse to admit that I am suitably impressed by your stamina." The deep dweller added, reluctantly all the same. "You withstood eons within the sword and yet somehow you retain both your body and mind."

Raziel had no desire to talk to this being, even to be complimented and said nothing in reply but when the Elder declared;

"Even through your arrogant despite of me you remain forever my most enduring and incorruptible of servants."

He had had enough.

"We have been through this before, old one." He spat with a suitable amount of contempt. "I have never been nor will I ever be your servant."

The Elder laughed at him long and deeply, the sound a deep rumbling tenor of debased and perverted amusement.

"That, Raziel, is where you are wrong." The old being stated still sounding somewhat smug. "You can not know, in your present state, the service which you have dedicated to me; the acts you committed for me and the souls you have sent to me to be cleansed in the Wheel of Fate."

Raziel scrambled at the rock and hoisted himself up to a more stable ledge. Angrily from this vantage point he glared down into the chasm in absolute defiance.

"Hold your gelatinous tongue!" He said.

"You dare speak so to me?"

He jabbed a bony talon down towards the darkness.

"You are not my master. I will have nothing to do with you." There was an ominous silence broken only by the churning of the waterfalls all around the edges of the wound that was the abyss.

Then the Elder God spoke again, the voice low and ominous.

"Do you imagine that you can simply turn your back?" It asked flatly. "That you could just leave both me and our game behind you like some forgotten milestone? You should know better than that, Raziel."

The wraith said nothing for a moment as he stared down but then swung his head away refusing to look.

"I am free from the confines of destiny." He said, perhaps a tad petulantly. "You have no hold on me. Not anymore."

That was the essential, _the essential_, point of his new life if he had indeed such a luxury. His ties to this thing had been cut and he would ensure that it stayed that way at any means necessary

"Your understanding of the situation is as poor as it is misguided." The elder rebuked him for the hopeful notion and then its tone turned wheedling. "It pains me to see the depths to which you, my greatest and most loyal of advocates has fallen."

Disgusted by such pathetically weak coaxing, Raziel turned his back as if to go.

"And yet even if what you believed was true, and that there is really is nothing to tie you down anymore, what does that honestly get you?" The old creature added quickly.

"It gets me freedom." Raziel replied in almost a whisper and without turning around again.

"It gets you nothing!" The Elder's contradiction almost overrode his words before he had even said them. "You are lost and without purpose." That almost sounded like an accusation. "Why are you even here? To defy me and confound me?"

Personally Raziel did not feel like committing to any sort of long term goal. In truth he merely wanted to find somewhere quiet and rest, perhaps for a century or two, but he knew the nature of Nosgoth better than that. He knew any enemies that would learn of his survival would never tolerate it and he would be constantly having to defend himself from endless attacks.

And then there was Kain, inconceivably gone and his great and utterly necessary work left unfinished.

"The hour is far too late for that Raziel." The Elder was carrying on, its tone changing to one of smug satisfaction. "Kain is gone, this time for good and despite your collective best efforts the fate of Nosgoth once again lies in the right hands. Mine."

He rankled at this, one eye narrowing and twitching slightly in the effort to control his first response.

"I do not have to stand here exchanging insults." He settled for saying instead, taking a step forward away from the abyss.

"And just where will you go?" The elder called after him. "What will you do? What is left for you out there?" Raziel kept walking but he was forced to the action, keeping himself fixed on his anger to not dwell on the fact that the false god had a point.

"There are no more prophecies left for you, no grandiose role of the saviour to play." The elder added as if sensing his melancholy thoughts. Those made Raziel stop briefly in his tracks. If he was honest with himself, he would admit that he had enjoyed the feeling of uniqueness being the messiah of vampires had given him.

The attention and devotion of Janos Audron, Kain's support and even the Machiavellian plots of his enemies to stop him had given him purpose and sense of being. But like all his previous indentifies the illusion had been ripped from him.

"Without me this world is cold and dark, lifeless and grey." The elder said, intoning his words and lapsing into his boorish and repetitive sermon. "Come back to me Raziel. I will give you back your purpose."

Raziel remained totally still for perhaps five heart beats, then he slowly turned to look down the throat of the abyss with his glowing eyes narrowed to silt.

"Have you not paid attention to all that we have already gone through?" He asked incredulously and his tone dipping to ever increasing amounts of venom. "Never, you vile undulating demon." He swung his arm out wide in a cutting and dismissive gesture. "You hear me? Never!"

His words echoed out across the expanse of the whirlpool, ringing out to the distant misty horizon.

There was a long moment of hostile silence.

"Hold your defiance close to you then." The elder said in a slow voice, each word drawn out and full of disgusted frustration. "It is all you have left now and soon even that will abandon you."

This time when Raziel turned and walked away he did not look back. He kept on marching, a faint breeze blowing his ruined wings in front of him. Sensing an end to their conversation, the elder took the opportunity to deliver one last rebuke.

"I will see you broken for your crimes against my authority." The threat echoed with a far deeper resonance than its usual bellowing voice. "And this time Kain is not here to save you."

Raziel kept on walking, allowing some of his rage to dissipate itself in the fast pace that he set himself.

-

**_"The words of my former master echoed hollowly and his threats, which before had rung within me an ominous dread, now filled me only with contempt."_**

**_-_**

What irritated and angered him the most was the fact that this conversation had solidified in his mind the futility of his own sacrifice.

He had thrown himself to the Reaver for Kain and when he awoke, he had found it to have been for nothing at all. Kain was gone and the false god stood poised to control Nosgoth's fate for eternity.

He came to a short ridge and there he stopped. From here he could see the spire tops of the Sanctuary of the Clans. Now that he was closer he could perceive the damage that had been done to it that had not been evident from a distance.

Kain's own crest was clearly visible and unmarked. Raziel stared at it for a moment and then nodded once, a private affirmative.

He did not believe that Kain was dead. No… some deep part of him, an inner instinct told him that somewhere he was still breathing. Somewhere even the Elder could not see him.

That was an amusing thought, to think that the Elder's apparent omnipotent vision was flawed.

But if Raziel ever found Kain again, there would be no more of his 'heroic sacrifice', of that he was quite adamant. One bout of self obliteration was enough to show him that he was just not suited to being the martyr.

He would tread his new path and he would survive.


	5. Sanctuary

No sign of any living vampires, not even the once common nomadic Dumahim. The only evidence for their passing was the occasional corpse Raziel came across, either blackened by fire or impaled on weapons. This was all proof of human activity. Clearly, with Kain gone and the clan leaders dead, the humans of the citadel had taken advantage of the weakened vampire domination and had staged several attacks to claim more territory.

The full extent of their excursions became clear when Raziel came over a rocky hill and saw the sanctuary of clans.

Its banners were torn down and its gate swung wide open, patrolled by human vampire hunters. There were a few workers clearing away debris to make it easier to get inside as a portion of the roof had collapsed.

-

**_"Kain has once ruled all of Nosgoth from this place. It had stood as a symbol of the indomitable armies he commanded and the eternal measure of his command. Now I beheld it once again in decay, collapsing into its own dust. From dust to dust, like any other faded dream of glory." _**

**_-_**

For a fleeting moment, Raziel felt slightly indignant of this occupation. None but the highest vampires in the imperial order were allowed within those halls. The moment passed however and Raziel let it go as inconsequential as to who held some ruined castle.

Quietly he approached, making sure that he was in the shadows at all times and never once in the line of sight of any of the humans. They were a great number of them and he did not wish to provoke a fight when it could be avoided.

Eventually he managed to reach the side wall of the castle and there he waited, watching for the moment to move. Then, once the hunter who definitely would have noticed had walked off at a call from one of his fellows, Raziel latched onto the side of the stone and began to climb.

This ability, inherited from the drinking of Zephon's soul, was perhaps one of the most useful of abilities that he had acquired.

Scaling the smooth surface required a great deal of physical force as his talons had to grip into the stone before he could move on. It was slow going at first but the he managed to grab a hold of a ledge and pull himself up and from there Raziel was able to climb more swiftly, leaping higher and higher until he scrambled his way to the top dome like spire.

The thick was thick above here with the rising dust of shattered brick and stone coming up through large gaps in the roof, a result of the construction work going on inside.

Going over to one of these, Raziel peered down through the gloom to observe the main vestibule of the sanctuary from above. There were a great many humans at work as he had expected, lifting and dislodging the crumbled masonry out of the way so that the main entrance might be usable once again.

But at the sight of other figures in amongst them, Raziel frowned and crouched low to observe.

Giving orders to the human workers were Hylden, a good dozen of them or more. They were dressed in the armour and loose robes that marked them as officers of rank and oversaw the human work efforts with quiet attention, never speaking to them but gesturing to where the work needed to be done.

-

**_"Humans allies with Hylden? …. No. As I beheld the faces of these humans, I saw no conscious thought in their eyes. They were not allied, but enthralled."_**

**_-_**

The human's expressions were completely blank, their eyes wide and unblinking. They carried out the instructions the Hylden were giving them but that was all. There wasn't even any conversation going on between the workers, like puppets on a string they did their work and nothing more.

Raziel watched them work for a long moment in dissatisfaction and then carried on moving along the roof. The fate of mankind was of little to no concern of his, although the use of any living being as a mindless puppet lacked even the hint of honour and left a sour taste in his mouth.

Eventually he found a hole large enough of him to drop down into and he quiet entered the Sanctuary. The roof had fallen in and two the rubble made a steeply slanting ramp down to the floor.

He knew his way around this fortress as much as his own clan territory and it took him only a brief moment to determine his position in the building.

The throne room where the Pillars stood was just beyond the next corridor. It was from this room that Kain had dominated Nosgoth and had controlled ever strip of land from one shore to the next.

The clans down to the last vampire had been sworn to defend this castle above all others and to ensure that none other than the clan leaders and the Emperor himself were permitted into the throne room.

These things paled in insignificance when Raziel finally entered that main chamber.

He froze completely in his tracks, leg half lifted almost comically as he looked his fill at the nearly empty room.

**_-_**

**_"God…"_**

**_-_**

Where the nine shafts, the very foundations of Nosgoth itself, had once stood there was now only shattered remains and dust.

**_-_**

**_"The pillars…gone. _**

**_Not just corrupted or collapsed, but erased from existence completely. Any time when their state had been inconsequential to me retreated back into my mind and the true horror of their complete and utter devastation crashed down on me."_**

**_-_**

He was almost brought down to his knees by the shock and staggered back against the side of a wall for support against his momentary weakness. He blinked his eyes several times, as if to clear the terrible image from them like some unwelcome mirage.

How could this terrible thing be possible? It was beyond the scope of his mind to accept what was in front of him and almost desperately Raziel wanted to deny it. But the plain fact of the matter was like a smack in the face every time he looked.

This had been the outcome that, ultimately, both he and Kain had striven to prevent and how its whole horror was realised.

Raziel slowly shook his head, unwilling to react.

There was a flash from the eye of his sight and glancing up, he saw a faint silhouette of a female shape in the air.

**_-_**

**_"Briefly and only briefly... Ariel appeared before me eyes. Her skeletal face looked at the site where the pillars had once stood with augmented fear clear in her expression. Terror for the fate that had behalf her charge, the Balance pillar, and horror at returning to this place where she had been bound for eons."_**

-

This was no illusion.

He could sense he presence now and actually feel from her emotions in their confused mixture of dismay, fear and anger.

Before he had a chance to react however, Arial vanished and faded away once more as did the sense of her being.

"Magnificent isn't it?" An unexpected rasping voice asked and Raziel whipped around, instinctively raising his talons as he adopted a fighting stance.

In his shock at seeing the destroyed Pillars he had not noticed that he was not alone. Standing in the centre of the Pillar's base, staring at their dusty remains with some satisfaction was a Hylden.

He was thin, even by his species standards and looked quite frail yet held himself up with the strong stance of a disciplined body. He had a great deal of elaborate jewellery hanging from his bony frill, hanging down to his shoulders were a very loosely fitting red robe travelled down just past his waist. He paused to pull a hood behind him up over his head.

"A true testament to the great eternal and genius strategy of Hash'Ak'Gik." He turned around and faced Raziel with apparently no surprise at the blue wraith's presence. His eyes were alight with the same pulsing green glow of his kin and his lips were pressed together in a tight smile.

There was something ominous about him and Raziel felt strangely abstracted when he looked at him and repelled, as if they were different poles of the same magnet. Slowly he lowered his talons.

"He played the game with pawns scattered across time itself to bring about this opening and the salvation of our people." The Hylden spoke softly with something of a mocking undertone and then bowed, sweeping his arms theatrically.

"Raziel…on behalf of the Hylden race, might I offer my most sincere and heartfelt thanks?"

Raziel stared him down for a long silent moment and then narrowed his own eyes sharply. The voice of this Hylden sounded somewhat familiar although he could not from whence he had heard it before.

"If it's all the same to you, you can keep them." He replied flatly instead.

The Hylden chuckled and straightened up.

"I am Ishtar, high priest of the faith of Speakers, the priesthood of the Keeper." He declared with a long winded introduction. He spoke proudly and with a hint of arrogance that remained Raziel of Moebius.

"Ever since I heard tell of your return, I had hoped that perhaps we might let bygones by bygones." Ishtar carried on, head tilted to one side. "We could work together to rescue this inert land from destruction."

Without a mouth to properly frown, Raziel drew his brows down to knit over the top of his nose.

"I have not set eyes on you before and yet you speak as if we have met." He said deliberately not answering the proposal.

"Oh but we have." Ishtar insisted, beginning to take steps towards him. Raziel held his ground without flinching but his talons twitched back and forth, tensed and ready for use at a moment's notice.

"You might not recall but I have spoken with you once before, alongside my two peers." The Hylden said. "We were using the vampire you called 'Turel' as a host at the time."

A flash of memory and Raziel knew him. That voice was now more the familiar. It had been the voice of one of three Hylden which had been using Turel as a puppet, putting him through the agony of their possession with each use.

That voice had been the one urging him to face Kain and kill him back in the catacombs of Avernus cathedral.

"You tortured my brother…" Raziel began in a low tone. "For how long?"

It was an absurd sentiment to take in retrospect. Turel, along with Dumah, had thrown him into the abyss in the first place and there had once been a time where Raziel had been prepared to hunt down and kill Turel and all his brothers for their abandonment of him.

But Turel had been punished enough by the time Raziel had found him, almost insane and delirious from the Hylden that been infesting him like worms.

"Time is a meaningless concept in this game." Ishtar said clearly not that concerned but when he saw the expression on Raziel's face he amended his tone.

"You see… in order to have the power base we needed in Avernus, our devoted servant Azimuth summoned him to her for us to use as a proxy god. It was in our best interests to use him sparingly so we were as… 'humane'… as possible."

Raziel was not placated.

"He was insane by the time I found him." He said slowly but then he took a step forward. Ishtar did not recoil but one eye narrowed in concern.

"There was no malice behind it, you have my word." He said briskly. Raziel waved one hand to his right dismissing that argument.

"Your word is useless to me." The wraith began. "Vengeance on the other hand…"

Ishtar's satisfied demeanour was now gone and he looked grave and drawn, looking down his nose at the blue figure before him. He was still calm and controlled but not he was aware of the danger to his person and displeased.

"Is that what you've been reduced to?" He asked, taking a slow step away from Raziel and well out of arms reach. "Elevated Messiah… now petty thug? Truly pitiful."

Raziel came closer.

"I'm not in the mood to exchange insults."

"Neither am I." Ishtar's face swung back to its triumphant grin but he kept his eyes fixed on Raziel, never diverting his gaze away. "In fact, I feel almost like I'm in euphoria. The grand work we began all those centuries ago has finally come to its end and after contributing so much I can finally rest."

At this Raziel paused and narrowed one eye sceptically.

"Contributing?" He repeated.

"The curse of agony." The Hylden said and spread his arms. "The 'dark gift' as the vampires somewhat ironically refer to it."

Raziel straightened immediately and stared at Isthar as the Hylden carried on.

"A difficult creating process, welding science with sorcery… but the effort paid off. It brought such joy to the suffering masses of my race to know that equal amounts of vampires were in purgatory as well."


	6. Ishtar

Raziel glared at Ishtar furiously.

"Explain yourself Hylden!" He demanded. Ishtar tilted his head to one side with a wide sadistic grin.

"I always find the sheer volume of ignorance that the vampires display amusing." He remarked, tapping one elongated finger against the side of his almost skeletal nose. "That knowledge was once common to even the smallest of your fledglings and is now a jealously guarded arcane secret." He let out a short barking laugh at some private joke. "Ba'al Zebur was a fool to declare us 'unspoken'." He added almost as a non sequitur.

"It seems they have even forgotten the hand to struck them down and forced them into the shadows to feed on bloody meat like animals."

Raziel continued to fix him with a level and piercing glare.

"Are you saying that you are the creator of vampirism?"

The murals he had seen had always shown that the Hylden had been the ones to curse the vampires with the Dark gift but they had never gone into specifics, just a broad and simple generalisation.

"I contributed." Ishtar admitted with a shrug. "As leader of the House of Faith, I was one of three who combined their efforts in delivering our vengeance to the vampires."

The glee and perverted satisfaction was clear in his voice and Raziel narrowed his eyes in distaste.

"I and the leaders of the House of War and the House of Knowledge nearly drained ourselves, but the effort was well worth the trouble.

Secure in their smug and arrogance victory the vampires were unprepared and quickly fell to the infection."

The Hylden Priest, at least at first sight, was typical of those Raziel had seen thus far; filled with malice and hatred for anything resembling a vampire. But still there was that continued sense of something more, some calmer brooding personality within and Raziel began to suspect that this more common attitude was little more than a façade.

"So it was you." He said with controlled anger.

"Of course." Ishtar admitted without a moment's hesitation but then his expression grew puzzled and thoughtful. "But even we could never have imagined the vampires, the original blue skinned fanatics, to be filled with a zeal that would drive them to commit suicide. That surprised even the most vengeful of any us."

Raziel knew of that of course, even Janos Audron had confirmed as much. That when the Elder had turned his back on the vampires, for their involuntary separation from his Wheel of Fate, many of them had been so devastated that they had committed suicide on a large scale.

"I had thought that only Janos Audron was left of the original bloodline." Ishtar was saying, clearly following one thought on from the other almost rambling. Raziel had noticed that when he spoke, he tended to carry on without more direction. But then when he said; "And that with his acquisition their stain could finally be removed from Nosgoth. Yet my scouts reported combating a group of them not far from here." … Raziel snapped his head up and stared at him with widening eyes.

"Janos!" He began in a voice loud enough to echo through the room. "You have Janos?!"

Desperate to avoid his destiny, Raziel had sought a way to revive Janos Audron in the hope that the ancient vampire might be able to release him from the curse of the Reaver. But in the event, all of that had been part of the plan of the Hylden General who had abandoned Mortanious' frayed body to take over Janos'. Raziel had battled with the possessed ancient but when the time had come to strike the final blow, he found that he could not bring himself to deliver the final blow and kill him.

The Hylden general had used that break in the action to recover and destroy Raziel's physical form and had escaped, taking Janos with him.

It had been a great source of personal guilt for Raziel, knowing of the suffering he had put Janos through. The first time he had lead the Sarafan to his doorstep and the second had condemned him to the servitude of his enemies.

Ishtar laughed, the sound thick with perverted mirth.

"Audron… the court jester." He declared and Raziel began to bristle. "Play thing of the houses and an entertainment to be abused at leisure."

The blue wraith took an angry step forward.

"Where is he?!" He demanded. "What have you done with him?"

Ishtar sneered back.

"What difference can that make?" He asked and then his grin widened. "Oh… well now, actual concern?" It was not so much a question as a deduction and his voice was tinged with a mocking overtone. "How remarkable. He actually does mean something to you doesn't he?"

Raziel could feel himself loosing control of his temper. He began to move toward the Hylden, talons twitching

"Where is he?" He repeated. Ishtar glanced up and down when he realised that now, battle was inevitable.

"Where he can do some good for once in his miserable existence." He said and slowly let his arms trail out to either side in preparation. "Do not think you can cross us Raziel." He added, his voice becoming cold as his pretences fell away and he became rigidly focused. "Our saviour you might be but if you stand in our way we will destroy you."

Now Raziel was pushed past caution. He lunged, talons outstretched.

Ishtar side stepped, dodging the slash. He was fast, his wiry frame giving him great agility and dexterity.

Raziel rebounded and lashed again but once more Ishtar dodged, ducking under the darting talons. His manoeuvrability as so acute he seemed to bend almost like the air itself, moving graceful and so quickly it made it look as Raziel was moving in slow motion.

As Raziel turned, there was a spark and then a sudden flash of light.

-

**_"Inconceivable as it might have been, I actually watched as his soul pushed its way out of his body and then manifested as a wall of energy. As it struck, I felt for a brief moment the Hylden priest's malice and hatred as if it were a part of my own thoughts."_**

-

It looked, in the brief instant before the attack hit him, like a projection of Ishtar himself made out of pure light. It moved with the speed at which light travels, slamming into the blue wrath and the impact rattled Raziel from head to toe.

He was thrown several feet before he collapsed to the ground, gasping for air. Even his matted hair felt itself in pain, a general agony distributed evenly over his entire body.

"How did you..." He gasped, struggling to rise.

Ishtar's expression did not change, remaining cold and emotionless as he came near.

"All matter in the universe is energy Raziel." He said. "And as I am sure you are well aware, the soul itself is an acute source of energy."

That was something Raziel was not ignorant of in the least. His sustenance came from souls, the older and more experienced the better the meal.

"I have learned to project mine and make it a weapon." Ishtar explained. "Once directed it can not be stopped."

Shaking the numbness in his off away, Raziel managed to climb back up to his feet although he was still shaky.

Without so much as a twice of one eye, Ishtar unleashed his soul again with a flash at him.

But now Raziel was prepared for it and dodged, sliding to the right just in time and as the priests soul rocketed by he could feel its burning hatred.

Hoping to catch him off guard Raziel ran forward, thinking that while his soul was projected Ishtar's body was vulnerable

It certainly looked that way as the Hylden stood their completely motionless, but at the last second his soul flew back and poured into his body down his mouth.

Raziel's talons were inches away from slamming into his body when the Hylden moved, propelling himself to the side with another burst of soul energy.

Not only could he unleash it outside his own body it seemed, but also he could use it to propel his physical form to incredible feats of strength and speed. Even Raziel's vampirically enhanced reflexes could not keep up with him as the Hylden began to almost literally fly back and forth, as fleeting as the wind itself and as intangible as a cloud.

Acting on desperation Raziel reached out with one hand and tried to hold him in place during telekinesis.

It had some pleasing effect. Ishtar did indeed stop, an expression of profound irritation marking his calm face, but only for a moment.

A struggle of minds began between them, one trying to dominate the other.

Ishtar's mind was like ice and trying to grasp it with his own, Raziel felt a dreadful numbing beginning to ebb through him. It was like some insidious poison, an infection that he felt himself taking on the more and more he was in contact with it.

Finally driven past the point of endurance, Raziel let go of his mental grip and tried to swing away.

Ishtar however did not give him the opportunity, propelling himself almost directly up in front of the blue wraith; his green eyes cold and flintily.

In that moment Raziel knew that he was outclassed.

"You can't defeat me Raziel." The Hylden said. Raziel tried to take several steps back but Ishtar lashed out and grabbed his hand, holding him in place.

Then, slowly he pulled aside the red robe in front of himself.

"Not while I have this."

Attached to his chest underneath the robe was an elaborate collection of golden jewel, much the same as he wore around his head. It crisscrossed over his shoulder, with a central piece directly in the middle.

There, attached to him by thin golden chains was an ornate piece with dull green gemstone centre, its style setting it out of place in the arrangement. It was covered in different markings and almost scarab like in shape.

But the fashion statement was of little importance to other, far more devastating affects.

-

**_"At the sight of the stone, I felt a deep, enveloping sense of weakness. My strength fled as is routed and I dropped to me knees, unable to rise. It felt as if I was dying slowly, each part of me fading away into nothingness."_**

**_-_**

Without having to even strike him down Ishtar had reduced Raziel to a crumbled invalid, writhing in his grip as if stricken with fever.

He collapsed to his knees instantly, only held up by Ishtar's grip on his arm. He gasped, straining as if he could not get enough air. With wide eyes, he stared at the stone and the longer he stared the more he felt himself dying.

"I'm sure Kain would have told you about this trinket." Ishtar began, tapping the green stone with his free hand. "It's called the Nexus Stone."

Even in the midst of his fading strength Raziel had a flash of recognition at the name. Kain had indeed mentioned this relic before, the Nexus Stone… the very artefact that helped him defeat the Sarafan Lord centuries ago.

"With it, one can bend space to create doorways between one point and another, regardless of distance." Ishtar carried on, seeing the sudden horror on the blue wraiths face. "But it also has another far more useful feature."

He let Raziel drop with a loud cracking thud onto the floor and kneeled down to watch him writhe there.

"It was created by the last Hylden king and he intended it to be used to protect his people from the Vampires ultimate weapon, the Soul Reaver." The Priest said, his voice becoming menacingly soft. "It renders the soul devouring power of the blade inert and lifeless."

With his left hand, he reached to his chest and with a clinking noise disconnected the stone from the rest of the display. Deliberately he held it closer, almost in front of Raziel's face.

"That is to say, it renders YOU inert and lifeless."

-

**_"I could not move. In the stone's presence I was as helpless as a new born child. I struggled to rise, to escape… but it was in vain."_**

**_-_**

His struggling ceased; the strength to even move his arms fled from him. All he could do was lie there like a ragdoll, unable to defend himself from the insidious effects of the relic.

He truly felt like he was going to die, as if once the stone completed its work… his very essence would dissipate forever.

"Goodbye Raziel." Ishtar said with a note of finality in his voice. "It is truly a shame that we could not work together."

Raziel tempered on the verge, as if in a moment he might plunge of the edge into that black abyss of death that he had escaped for so long.

There had been moments, even when he had been a vampire clan leader, when he considered what death would be like. The final end, where all thought and conscience ceased and not even the reach of the Elder could draw it back. If this was indeed it then the prospect filled him with fresh and unbearable terror and in his panic, he did the only thing he could do.

**_-_**

**_"Left with no other options, I felt go my hold on the physical plane and gratefully slipped back into the spectral realm. As I retreated, I felt the debilitating effects of the Nexus Stone fade and as I lay there, I could feel my strength slowly return."_**

**_-_**

Ishtar vanished along with that dreadful stone, the chamber taking on a greenish tint and warping hideously in the guise of the spirit world.

It took a long time it seemed for Raziel to recover. Perhaps ten minutes had gone by before he had enough strength left to push himself up into a sitting position and perhaps twenty more before his body stopped trembling.

Even when he felt well enough to get back up through he sat there, head hanging as he tried to calm his racing thoughts.

The Hylden priest had been the first once to bring him to the point of utter annihilation. Even the Elder had not done that and that threat and his very real means of carrying it out, shook him tremendously.

Then some of his pride began to reassert itself. He had conquered the Reaver and survived its test with his sanity intact. He would not succumb to fear again, not to this threat.

His eyes narrowing, Raziel began to stand back up; new more positive thoughts running through his mind.

-

**_"As humiliating as my defeat had been, it had given me purpose. I now had a role to fulfil here."_**

**_-_**

Ishtar's threat had come with the gift of purpose and once that Raziel felt more than obliged to embrace.

-

**_"Janos Audron… he had been my mentor and most dedicated supporter. He had been the only being that could ever be considered to be completely 'on my side'._**

**_-_**

He looked down at his right hand where the Reaver had once coiled itself as his weapon.

**_-_**

**_"It was my fault that he now lies within the clutches of his enemies. I had abandoned him to eons of torture."_**

**_-_**

Raziel clenched that hand into a fist.

**_-_**

**_ "But this I would rectify. I would find Janos Audron and save him from the Hylden. I would correct the mistakes I made and pay for the debt I owed the ancient vampire. This much, if nothing else, Janos deserved of me."_**


	7. Citadel

The Citadel of the humans towering structure with high walls surrounded by thick and wide moats; it was a maze of waterways and canals designed to impede the progress of any attacking vampire force.

Great towers of metal and stone erected in the centre of the fortress, these provided the city with manufactured heat, light and steam with which they powered the machines that the humans seemed so found of.

From the cliffs of the abyss, Raziel watches the city from afar sceptically before he approached it. He had infiltrated it once before and the humans inside had had mixed reactions to his presence.

Some had bowed down before him in reverence, hailing him as their saviour from the vampire menace. Others had reached for their weapons to try and slay him.

-

**_"The human citadel had stood as the last free holding of mankind, largely because none of us could be bothered enough to swot such meaningless resistance aside. The hunters which ventured outside their walls had offered only competition for fledglings and easy sport."_**

-

He approached the stronghold cautiously, taking note of every difference he saw from his previous visitation, not wanting to be surprised by any unfamiliar things.

-

**_"Now however, I saw that in Kain's absence and the demise of the clan leaders, the humans had tried to expand their territory and had been largely successful."_**

-

There were now dozens of outposts marking the perimeter of what the humans perceived to be their territory, small camps of hunters that were no doubt sent out to probe the land for vampires before settlers could be permitted to move outside the walls of the fortress.

Already banners of the citadel were hanging from various old buildings once used by the Melchiahim, Dumah and even the Zephonim.

What the humans desperately needed it seemed was land. Land gave them room to grow crops and food that they required to survive. While Nosgoth was near a lifeless husk, some plant life could be encouraged to grow in well watered places.

As Raziel came within sight of the massive city walls, practically given protection by a series of cliffs and water filled gullies, he stopped and frowned deeply at the sight he beheld.

-

**_"But as I has suspected, there were Hylden here as well. Many of them in fact, a near occupying force in and around the city."_**

-

A Hylden army was quite a thing to see. Close to the walls of the city were dozens of encampments, stacked high with military supplies and tents. These hylden were not the lightly armed scouts he had seen before but there soldiers, all of them heavily armed and their positions well fortified.

What surprised Raziel even more where the beasts that the Hylden had around them, kept chained and cowed, forced to huddle still.

They were demons, beings native to the dimension to which the Hylden had been banished. They came in a wide variety of sizes and shapes, all of them utterly alien and even the least of them deadly in the extreme.

Most of these demons were the middle sized bone thin creatures that harnessed lightning as a weapon. Their arms which conducted the deadly electricity were fastened down to the ground by metal chains, their pincers forced apart as to keep them from connecting and sparking the energy.

The largest demon was a single titan about thirty feet high, covered in short black fur with huge bone spikes jutting out of the arms and shoulder blades. A pair of massive curving horns rammed his head, which was pinned down to the ground by an ugly uncomfortable looking metal collar.

If demons were here, that meant that the Hylden were keeping their connection to the other world open to bring forth their beasts. Mostly likely that would be the place were Janos Audron was being kept. The only question was, where would this opening be?

-

**_"While normally such a turn of events would be detrimental to my goals, this was actually quite pleasing. Here I hoped to find a Hylden that would prove more talkative than Ishtar and from them learn where Janos Audron was being held captive." _**

-

The walls of the citadel were still patrolled by human warriors but they showed no alarm at the alien army encamped nearby. Raziel was sure however that if they saw him they would raise a general alarm. He did not wish to have to fight his way through this otherworldly multitude to get into the fortress.

The mere fact that the Hylden were encamped here spoke of several things. It meant that the invaders were dominant and the humans subservient, neither of them allies. Only an idiot would permit an armed force to remain outside the walls of your castle, even those of a supposed ally.

Raziel knew that the fortress had underwater pipes connecting it to the rivers that fed the abyss in order to keep the water in the moats flowing and avoid stagnation. However in order to get to those moats he would have to pick his way through the encamped army.

Glancing up he judged the walls and their general outlying build. They were a series of battlements stretching between wide towers where artillery was emplaced to bombard any approaching hostile force. One side of the nearest tower however looked climbable.

Raziel paused only briefly to judge the week air currents before he took hold of the end of his ruined wings and leapt.

Gliding high over the heads of the otherworldly army Raziel had a better opportunity to guess their numbers. A good ten thousand foot soldiers with a battalion of enforced demon support. Such a force, while smaller than other armies, would be a terror on the battlefield if managed properly. Perhaps this was a spearhead force and the main bulk of the Hylden army was somewhere else, perhaps to the east.

Coming into contact with the wall, the blue wraith sank his talons into the stone and hung there waiting to see if he had been noticed.

Neither the Hylden below nor the humans above reacted and slowly he began to climb, moving higher and higher.

Reaching the precipice of the battlements, he peered over the top just enough so that he could observe.

The hunters patrolling the defences all had that blank look, emotionless and devoid of thought.

When the nearest had turned his back to look towards the south, Raziel vaulted over the edge and ran forward. He closed the gap between them quickly and before the humans could even turn back to notice him, Raziel had clamped a hand over his mouth and stabbed him through the back with his talons.

"I'm sorry." He apologised, some remote ethic informing him that at the very least it was rude to stab someone in the back, whatever the circumstances. True that had not stopped him from doing it to Moebius' soul, but the old man had had it coming. He recompensed for it by not devouring the man's own spirit the moment it left his body.

The hunter fell to the ground with a sound the expressionless look replaced by one of mild surprise on his dead face. Raziel pulled him to one side just behind a stone parapet where he might go for longer without notice.

The interior of the city was a connecting maze of stone and metal pipe, the many nooks and crannies providing prefect cover for him to prowl the fortress unobserved.

-

**_"The faces of the humans here were again blank and emotionless. What kind of force was strong enough to dominate the minds of an entire city?" _**

**_-_**

Even the commoners went about their business woodenly, giving away without conscious thought to the many Hylden guards that occupied the place. The human militia and hunters backed up the Hylden's own forces in their acquisition of the city. It was like a city of puppets, no talking, no touching, no social interaction whatsoever.

That disturbed Raziel a great deal and the way the humans stood there hardly even breathing he began to wonder if they would react at all if he just walked out in front of them.

Even Kain would not have simply turned off the minds of those who opposed him, even if he could have.

One or two demons were in the streets of the city as well, those of the green poison spitting variety small enough to the enclosed streets. These were used to knock down a few buildings with their burning spray, their demolition proceeding quickly to humans could move in with work crews to begin construction under the stern eye of Hylden architects.

Raziel dropped down into a dark and dingy alleyway, filled with a thick steamy mist from a pipe nearby. At the far end, standing and watching the humans go by were a pair of Hylden who was oblivious as he slowly began to approach.

The Hylden on the right hand his left hand raised and he was counting the humans as they went by, his lips moving soundless as he mentally calculated their numbers. Then he frowned and let out a long annoyed sigh

"Too few cousin…" He was saying, drumming his fingers on the front of his chest as Raziel drew near. "I had not thought their numbers would dwindle this much."

"It is Kain's doing that the flock of mankind is so depleted." The other said with a shrug, glancing up and down the outside street. "But do not despair; in time we can breed them back to full strength once more."

Raziel lashed out quickly, grabbing each one of them across the shoulders with his talons and jerking them back into the alley.

One he smashed up across the wall, the impact so hard that the Hylden's skull shattered into a bloody froth.

"By the Keeper!!" The other replied, struggling free and going for a strange green tinted sword at his waist. Raziel dropped the corpse and lunged, knocking the weapon away with one swipe and then pinning the struggling Hylden to the wall.

He held him there, the sharp tips of his talons digging into the soft flesh of the throat.

"Where is Janos Audron.?" He asked coldly and some recognition came into the Hylden's eyes at both the voice and the face before him. "Talk Hylden; or I swear I'll rip out your throat."

There was a flash of conflicting emotions on the Hylden's face, but then anger won out.

"I don't know!" He spat. "And even if I did, I would never tell you." Despite his circumstances he actually leered at Raziel. "Where were you when we needed you the most, saviour?" He jabbed his free hand into Raziel's shoulder accusingly.

"Busy." Raziel replied tartly, knowing better than to get sidetracked. "So who would know where Janos is?"

The Hylden struggled trying to break free but Raziel was too strong for him. To make him compliant Raziel lifted him up and then slammed him down again against the side of the wall. There was a loud cracking nose as several bones broke and the Hylden gritted his teeth against the pain, as if crying out was beneath his dignity.

"Only the heads of the three houses of war, knowledge and faith are privy to that kind of information." He began in whisper, his voice made even more hoarse by the pain. He was breathing hard through his nose, blood leaking out the side of his mouth as he fixed Raziel with a hate filled glare.

"My master, Shamash, will see you punished for this!" He asserted. "The power of his mind dominates the city and its cattle and it will turn its wrath on you for this betrayal."

Without warning he slammed a kick into Raziel's chest, forcing him to let go. The dropped Hylden immediately scrambled for his sword and when he grasped the hilt of the dropped weapon he swung back to face the blue wraith.

Raziel was fast, moving in far too close for the Hylden soldier to defend himself. The blue wraith grasped the Hylden's wrist and then clamped down hard, breaking the arm and then wrenching the entire hand off in a spray of blood and bone fragments.

With the sword now in his possession, still with the dismembered hand clutching the hilt, Raziel swung it around wide and decapitated the Hylden with a one swipe.

The head hit the floor with a loud 'thunk' and the body swayed on its feet for a moment before collapsing, the stump of the neck spurting blood.

Freed from the flesh, the soul of the Hylden began to lift forth seeking to fade into the spectral realm.

Raziel was there however and his trip here and the fight had made him hungry. Drawing down his cowl to expose the hideous gap left by his missing jaw Raziel drew in the soul and as he devoured it, he felt strength return to him.

-

**_"My goal now was clear. I would find this, Shamash… who I deduced to be the head of the Hylden house of war and beat what I wanted to know out of him. I hoped that Janos might be able to last just a bit longer in hostile grasp of their kind." _**


	8. Blood

**_"With the covering blanket of night, the Hylden occupation was loud in celebration. For the first time I was permitted to see their culture first hand rather than relying on the biased records left in the murals of the ancient vampires."_**

**_-_**

Raziel knew better than to simply blunder his way through a hostile city in search of one person. As much as the delay pained him, he waited in the shadows and watched. The Hylden paid no attention to the body of the man he had left on the battlements and he had disposed of the other Hylden two by hiding the remains down a pipe.

Contending himself with observation he saw that the Hylden were divided into houses, factions that operated a great deal like the clans of Kain's empire, each with their own emblem on the front of the Hylden's uniforms.

Family seemed to be a very significant part of their society as well. Every Hylden Raziel overheard referred to his fellows as either cousin or brother and sister, depending one whom he was addressing. Only elders of great respect were given the titles father and grandfather.

Their time spent in their confinement within the demon dimension was portrayed loudly in the way the more sensitive Hylden seemed to nearly jump at any unexpected noise. Even the most steadfast soldier in their ranks seemed perpetually wild eyed. Their insecurity translated itself into brutality and they whipped their demon servants with vigour.

Eventually night came and only the faintest hint of stars could be seen through the smog like clouds above.

And then Raziel saw his opportunity. A large group of Hylden were gathering near the centre of the Citadel, many of them warriors and from his safe and shadowed perch he could see that one of them was dressed in armour far more elaborate in design than the others.

Before them were several humans in rich clothing, mostly brocade doublets and capes. They were all genuflecting towards the Hylden in the elaborate armour, pressing their faces to the flow in a contemptible grovelling gesture. By their attire Raziel guessed them to be the ruling council of the citadel and as such, their submission to this one Hylden meant only one thing.

This had to be the one he sought.

Approaching this leader required tact. He was surrounded by dozens of bodyguards and Raziel did not want to have to cut through them all to get to him.

Instead he waited just a bit more for it to get so dark that the various patrols began carrying lanterns. By then the Hylden command were entertaining themselves by pitting two demons of relative size against one another, whipping them into combat. One was a medium sized demon with large muscles and short red fur, the bone spurs along the outside of his arms protruding only a half foot. The opponent was a thinner, lightning type with a far leaner frame but superior agility.

Sparks of lightning and fire shot from their claws and months in unpredictable directions as their otherworldly dog fight got underway. The two beasts, driven forward unwillingly, slashed and bite and clawed at the other in a reluctant battle.

With the Hylden forces watching all cheered and with their attention distracted, Raziel drew closer and closer to the enclosed pavilion where the leader had retired along with the subdued human elite.

The pavilion was surrounded by Hylden guards, but their attention was on the fighting demons and now on the pipes stretching over them. Along these Raziel climbed, silently with his attention kept on them for the slightest sign of movement the guards.

From here he could see the panorama of the spectacle. On the far side of the ring where the two demons were fighting was a large set of construction equipment that was evidentially being used to improve or replace human works with the more advanced Hylden constructions. One such piece of machinery was a large, grinding device like a large drum that cut up building stone by a complex row of long and white hot blades.

One of the guards just happened to glance up and upon him Raziel dropped, silently and swiftly. His talons sank into the being's neck, severing his wind pipe and silencing the alarmed call before it could emerge.

Grabbing the trashing body, Raziel dragged it back into the shadows and there quickly drew down his cowl and drank the emerging soul down.

Too enwrapped by the spectacle of the demon dog fight, no one had noticed the absence of the guard nor his elimination. That was all to the good. Now there was an opening in the pavilions protection and Raziel slipped inside.

There were tables and chairs, obviously taken from the houses of the wealthy of the citadel, situated here and there and in these lounged the Hylden leader and his elite.

The human council, if that was what they were, were kneeling down by the side of the chairs like chained dogs with their heads bowed low in submission. Their blank expressions gave testament to their state of detachment.

The Hylden leader was quite stout and his armour made him look quite fat too, although his face like all those of the others were hollow cheeks and bony. There were many scars over his hands and head, some clearly gained in battle but others had the look of being self inflicted.

Then he turned to look at where Raziel had entered, the first one to notice the intrusion. His green eyes burned with the same kind of fire that Ishtar's had, more bright than that of the other Hylden. His face expressed recognition but not alarm at the sight of the blue figure moving towards him.

Slowly he raised the goblet he was holding in a toast.

"Welcome, my saviour." He said but without much warmth. "Welcome indeed."

Looking over the other Hylden started from their seats in alarm, reaching for their weapons. There were only three of them and they were generals and strategists, not warriors. Raziel dove into them without mercy, his speed and agility greatly surpassing theirs.

He finished them off quick and fast, silencing them efficiently with precise strikes with his talons.

The leader, who had not so much as budged from his chair, watched the slaughter of his sycophants calmly. He merely cast a disapproving gaze on Raziel and let out a remorseful sigh when the deep was finally done.

"It is a long time since I and my fellows spoke to you through the lips of the warped vampire of Avernus." He said and with that his voice did seem familiar. Like Ishtar, he had been one of the Hylden remotely influencing the deranged Turel.

"You are Shamash, leader of the Hylden House of war." Raziel began in a flat tone, kicking aside a carcass.

"Are you asking me or telling me?" The Hylden replied whimsically. Raziel's eyebrows levelled at him.

"Telling." He said. The Hylden shrugged, drained his goblet in one go and then stood up.

"In that case I am Shamash, leader of the Hylden House of war… at your service." He placed the cub on the arm rest of his chair. Raziel cast a glance at the humans still kneeling there. They had paid absolutely no notice to his entrance nor the carnage he has just caused. One of them was covered in blood from one of the fallen Hylden and did not seem to notice.

"It is you who controls the humans of this city?" He asked, fixing his gaze on Shamash. The Hylden leader grinned and taped one of the humans roughly on the head.

"Impressive it is not?" He strode forward and Raziel looked him over quickly. He had a sword by his side, a one handed bastard sword with a barbed edge. He had plate armour but he seemed not to be encumbered while wearing it and waked with the recognisable precision of a trained swordsman.

"Possession of the minds of lesser creatures such as these is nothing when done on a one to one basis." Shamash ran a hand over his curved and smooth head his grin widening. "Even the most inept Hylden can control one creature, be it human or demon directly. Expanding control over so large a group however would indeed be quite taxing if I were to directly control them all."

Shamash turned and gestured. Obediently the humans rose to their feet and stepped back, leaving the two of them enough space.

"All I have done is turn off their perception of alarm and make them obey. Their own minds can direct their bodies well enough after that. Why strain myself?"

Raziel spared the humans only the briefest of glances before he kept his full attention rigidly on the Hylden leader.

"You seem to have amassed quite the work force." He observed dryly. Shamash nodded.

"While humans are not exactly bright and they tend only to be as collectively intelligence as their most intellectually challenged member, they are the best building species there is." He gestured around them, emphasis the Citadel itself, a genius work of anti vampire design.

"Only now they serve you?" Raziel asked.

"Most of the cities of the Ancient vampires were constructed with the use of humans as slave labour. Why should we be any different?"

That particular statement caused Raziel to pause. The wise and benevolent ancients had been a dominating slave owning culture? Janos had never mentioned that. But then again why would he? By now Raziel thought that he really should learn to expect these upsets to his rose tinted world view.

"But I ensured it that humans would never again submit to being workers, or worse allies, of the vampires." Shamash was saying, smug pride in his voice. That brought Raziel's attention back fully to the matter at hand.

"I know you helped make the curse." He started. Shamash raised a finger in contradiction.

"One specific part of it." He said with a grin. "I contributed to the infection the requirement for vampires to continually need a supply of blood in order to keep their bodies alive." He broke off into a cackle of insane laughter as if prompted by a joke only he knew. "I turned them into such deranged predators that # they would find no willing allies no matter where they turned!"

Raziel stared at him for a long quiet moment, simply absorbing this knowledge. The origin of the blood thirst itself…

"Of course, that is inconsequential." Shamash's tone was suddenly then flat, emotionless and his face mirrored that sentiment. All pretence of the jovial had fallen away and he was rigidly defensive. "I know what you really wish to ask of me."

Raziel responded with a similar tone.

"Where is Janos Audron?" He asked coldly.

"Ishtar keeps him as his personal toy, something to poke and prod when he gets bored." The tilt to the hylden's head suggested brief amusement. "For a priest Ishtar has the most absurd sense of sadistic humour. Personally I would have just killed the ancient and have done." He made a cutting motion with one hand.

Raziel took several steps forward.

"I asked you where he is."

"I heard you the first time." It was only Raziel's heighted reflexes that saved him from a slice across the mid section. Shamash had moved so fast that he blurred, his sword whistling through the air at him. The blue wraith doubled back out of ranged quickly, determined not to underestimate his opponent this time.

"You think you can simply come here with your demands after you neglected your people for so long?" Shamash asked, reversing the sword so that's its point was level with him. "We owe you nothing."

Raziel knew that battle was now inevitable. He flexes his talons in preparation for a head on assault.

"Then I will have to simply carve the answer out of you." With that, he lunged forward.


	9. Possession

Shamash was the first to lunge. He was not as fast as Ishtar, perhaps hampered by the armour he wore and Raziel side stepped to avoid his sword as it lanced forward.

Counterattacking, he lashed out with his talons aiming his blow for the Hylden's defenceless face.

Shamash blocked the strike with his thickly armoured bracers and slashed around, his sword cleaving the air in a wide arc aimed at Raziel's head.

The blue wraith ducked underneath the swipe and then lunged forward, tackling the Hylden across the mid section.

Together the two of them collapsed to the floor, wrestling more than actual duelling. Without his feet under him Shamash could not use his blade properly and Raziel put that to his advantage. His body, being little more than the necessary muscle and sinew was able to twist in ways that his opponents could not and soon had the Hylden underneath him.

Shamash however managed to get both feet launched at Raziel's chest and kicked, knocking him away.

Staggering back up the blue wrath spun back and out of the way, Shamash's swordplay fast and furious.

"I have fought demons uncountable." The Hylden house leader said, not calmly but intently. "And I have tamed the beasts of hell itself! You can not defeat me!"

At this precise moment Raziel felt the loss of the wraith blade intently and for an instant would not mind repeating his imprisonment in the sword over again for the use of the weapon just once more.

He was going to have to change strategy here.

Shamash swung at his side and Raziel dodged to the other, his speed greatly surpassing the Hylden's. Shamash turned to face him again and each time he did Raziel dodged again, keeping the Hylden moving around trying to face him with his sword. At the right moment of confusion Raziel swung around quicker than before and lashed out with both arms and sets of talons extended.

There was the screech of metal twisting open, the wet noise of parting flesh and then the satisfying sensation when his talons struck bone. With a yell of outrage, pain and frustration Shamash reached around and grabbed Raziel by his short hair. With a firm grip he tore the blue wraith off his back, doing further damage to a bloodied hide and flung him away.

It would seem that Shamash's position as master of the House of War was something well earned. His gapping injury exposed his back vertebrae and a part of his rib cage. Somehow he remained on his feet, blood dripping down his legs to stain the floor.

Grunting, the Hylden reached up and laid a hand across his armoured chest breathing hard.

He glanced from the sword in his hand to Raziel and back again, clearly re-evaluating his opponent.

Then without any warning at all he dropped his weapon and bolted for the entrance to the pavilion.

Raziel, who had not been expecting his opponent to run, quickly started after him. There was however no hope to cutting him off.

Shamash burst through the startled Hylden outside, casting off his armour as he went. Pieces of the shattered plates, greaves and gauntlets fell away and past Raziel who followed close behind.

The blue wraith skidded to a stop beside several Hylden, who did not seem to notice him at all, all of them watching the extraordinary sight of their leader leaping completely naked into the ring with the two demons still inside.

The larger red demon had won out of the electric one, its opponent lying collapsed in a puddle of black demon blood.

The wounded red snorted and turned to face Shamash as the Hylden raced directly towards it. It roared, high on the bloodlust of the event and clearly intending to strike the approaching leader.

At the last possible second, Shamash leapt forward and past the reaching claws. His posture was that of a dive, his body moving against and then directly into the demon.

-

**_"I watched him slide effortlessly into the creature, as easily as if passing into water. His being melded effortlessly with the demon and the two of them became one."_**

**_-_**

Raziel took a step backwards, eyes widening in alarm. The other Hylden had much the same reaction. Evidentially this was not a skill Shamash had showed to his kinsmen before.

The beast shuddered, staggering a few steps back and letting out a long gurgling noise as it clutched at its throat. Fire belched forth from its gaping maw and it collapsed to its knees, straining to breath.

Then slowly it rose back onto its feet and behind its eyes was the intelligence of a ruthless mind, the savage animal gone.

"Let's see you do that again Raziel." Shamash declared through the demons lips, its voice gruff and echoingly deep. The head with its massive horns lowered and then the beast charged, its head held rigid like a massive battering ram.

With calls of alarm the other Hylden leap out of the way and Raziel slide forward, rolling into a ball and through the demons legs.

The demon smashed into the pavilion, the tent collapsing entrance collapsing and getting caught on the horns.

Raziel had a moment to steady himself and collect his thoughts as the demon freed itself, bellowing smoke and fire.

If he were, with his limited understanding of Hylden techniques, were to judge then he would suppose this ability to be an advanced form of possession. He knew other Hylden capable of projecting their souls into the bodies of other beings in order to control them but Shamash had perfected the technique so that he could meld his entire being with another.

Even Ishtar with his use of soul as a weapon had not done this.

"You can not face me yourself so you steal the strength of others." The blue wraith said, mildly contemptuous. Once Shamash had lost his nerve in fair fight he had tried for a huge unfair advantage.

The demon, now free of the enveloping tent, stalked towards him laughing loudly.

"One thing you learn in the Demon dimension is that ethics and fair play have no place in the battle for survival." Shamash spat, dripping fire from the demons lips.

The creature stamped down, his full weight sending an impact that shock the ground and knocked Raziel backwards.

"Kill or be killed!" A streaming jet of fire blasted forth, streaming towards the blue wraith like a river. Raziel was not quick enough to avoid the attack completely and felt the sustaining soul energy that kept his body going ebb and wane as it tried to repair the damage.

Raziel's only advantage now was speed and he used it to the full, running ahead of the projectiles of energy and the breath of flame. Guided by Shamash far more intelligent mind the demon did not allow Raziel any time to get in close keeping him at a distance.

Unfortunately for the Hylden leader, Raziel had several long range techniques of his own. Stopping sudden, the blue wraith raised both hands and cupped them in front of each other.

Focusing the technique of mental air compression that he had absorbed from an adult Turelim vampire Raziel shot the bolt of force forward. It flew far faster than the demons fire and smacked the creature directly in the left eye. There was a loud cracking noise as that side of the creatures skull collapsed, crushing the eyeball in a spray of blood and worse.

The beast, tormented in unbearable agony, thrashed about as if Shamash was having difficulty controlling it. In that enraged instance, the demon lowered its horns and charged.

Raziel dove out of the way at the last instance and the demon ran past, slamming into the construction equipment on the far side of the ring. The machinery swung to one side, twisting so that the large drum used to carve up brick fell on its side with a loud boom. The shock of impact started the device working, the device churning around whatever fragments of stone were left inside.

"Do as I say you stupid animal!" Shamash was snarling, reasserting his control over the creature as it turned back to face Raziel again.

The blue wraith though had seen his opening. Before the creature was completely back under control again he burst forward, racing to get in close. Grasping the short red fur he vaulted up the demon, climbing despite its thrash arms until he reached the base of the neck.

The demon, feeling the wraith standing upon it, swung back and forth trying to dislodge him. It bellowed angrily, its rage enforced by Shamash's own indignation.

Planting his feet firmly to steady himself Raziel lashed down with his talons at the thick muscle around the neck. Blood spurted from the wounds and Raziel could actually feel the flesh beneath him wanting to pull in two different directions.

That was Shamash's weakness. For all his skill he could not fully dominate the mind of the demon when it was enduring pain.

Climbing past the row of horns near the top of the head, he goaded the demon even further by stamping into its bloodied eye.

The beast bellowed in pain, staggering backwards and batting at its head to get its tormentor off.

"NO!" Shamash screamed from the creatures lips. Raziel ignored him and then deliberately slowly, he drew his talons across the membrane of the other eye.

The scream the creature let loose from that wound was so intense Raziel felt his entire body tremble and unable to bear the close proximity of the sound, he leapt off and away.

Thick green blood was streaming from the face, almost cascading onto the ground in thick puddles.

Landing in front of the blinded demon, Raziel turned and watched it for a moment. The demon may be blinded but Shamash wasn't.

Holding both hands out before himself he shot burst after burst of force into the demon's body. The wounding he had given it had made it confused and disoriented. Its mind was in such a state of disarray that Shamash could not direct it. It backed up more and more, holding its paws out in front of itself for protection.

Then, finally, it tripped and toppled backwards into the still churning stone cutter machine.

Even Raziel, who by now was more then used to the sight of blood, glanced away as the hot blades of the machine did its work.

The tough hide, muscle and bones of the demon were cleaved like butter and the contents of the creature spilled forth. The machine groaned loudly, the demons intestines spilling out and getting caught in the gears.

Just before the demon was sliced apart completely, Shamash leapt out, tumbling forward out of the machine. He was uninjured but he was also beaten.

He stood there, unarmed and naked before Raziel and the look on his face was evident proof that he knew he hadn't a prayer.

"After all I have struggled through…" He began as the blue wraith approached. "I deserved the reward of life… I earned it!"

Raziel grabbed him by the shoulder with one hand.

"That you did… but I earned it more."

His talons sank through the flesh, shattering the rip cage and puncturing the heart. Shamash's mouth gaped open for a second and then ground shut, blood leaking out through his nose.

He collapsed with a thump to the ground and as the corpse lay there growing cold, the soul that perhaps only Raziel could see began to emerge.

The blue wraith watched it hover there in the air before him for a moment, before he drew down his cowl and absorbed it into his body.

-

**_"Consuming Shamash's endurable soul filled me with a familiar surge and I realised at once that from him I was being augmented, given his power in addition to my own. As he could possess, should could I."_**

**_-_**

Whenever before he had absorbed a soul of powerful enemy the effort of doing so had left him stunned and disoriented. This time was no exception.

He could feel almost every nerve spasm as the energy was absorbed, causing him to collapse down onto one knee gasping for air.

The fit lasted only a moment and when it past, Raziel felt strength return double quick.

There were screams and loud yelling all around, a loud chorus of alarmed calls of human and Hylden alike.

Shaking his head to clear his grogginess, Raziel stood back up and looked around. The Hylden who had been enjoying themselves around the demon dog fight had long since retreated. Human vampire hunters, who had up until now been almost submissive servants to the Hylden, seemed to have woken up from their imposed dreams. From the streets to the towering battlements they turned with horrified alarm on their Hylden overseers and a struggle ensued across the entire citadel.

Women dragged their terrified children away from Hylden soldiers and the hunters moved to protect their young some even bringing out their specialised flame throwers.

Even emerging from the half collapsed pavilion were the startled and shaken looking nobility, who with one startled look at Raziel bolted for the safety of their men.

It would appear that Shamash had indeed been the source of the Hylden influence and now that he was dead the human's minds were their own.

A lone Hylden warrior armed with a rifle spotted him standing there, over the body of their leader and with came forward crying out its outrage.

Raziel reacted like lightning, springing forward through the air directly at the being. His spring was not a killing pounce but rather a dive. Like Shamash whose ability he had taken, his form flowed into the Hylden's like he was diving into water.

The feeling of possessing another body, of merging with its core was akin to pulling on a heavy coat. It felt cramped and seeing through the eyes of another was certainly strange.

He tested the occupied body, seeing the arms in front of him respond to his will.

-

**_"Infused with the soul of Shamash, my spiritual essence could now slide into the body of others and occupy the flesh. This allowed me to control the body and effectively use it as a disguise to go where I would previously be bared."_**

.


	10. Council

Without Shamash to enforce their servitude, the Hylden grip on the human citadel was shattered. The humans, to a man, turned on the intruders with upmost savagery. Over the centuries of their isolation behind the walls of this defended keep they had grown ruthlessly protective of this perceived territory.

Cries of rage and the clash of metal rang through the narrow streets of the city.

One human had had the interesting idea of setting loose a horde of chained demons from the paddock where the Hylden had kept them. Unleashed, the demons turned with bloodthirsty savagery on their former taskmasters.

Raziel watched from within his hijacked Hylden body, amused at the concept of humans and demons fighting side by side. He had no doubt they would turn on each other the moment the Hylden were repulsed but the moment of unity was interesting to see none the less.

Raziel's new ability was not without drawbacks. As with all skills taken from the souls of adversaries, his was a novice's version and he found that the longer he occupied a foreign body the more that body decayed.

The Hylden he wore was rotting, turning green and purifying in places. He made a mental note to keep that flaw in mind. While this ability was excellent for espionage it would not do him any good if his disguise decomposed when he needed it.

Sliding out of the body was akin to a surfacing out of deep water. With sudden jerks he pulled his arms free and then the rest of him came out, pushing out of the Hylden's back. Once he was separated, the body collapsed face first into the dirt on the side of the cliff face from which he had been watching events unfold. It crumbled into dust within moments and its remains were carried away by the wind.

While shattering the domination was satisfying in a petty sort of way it had not furthered his purpose in finding Janos Audron. Shamash had not been forthcoming with his information but other there were other Hylden leaders around, Ishtar included, and one of them would know where the ancient vampire was being held captive.

Raziel steadfastly refused to look the other difficulties he would have to overcome before and after the intended rescue. If he let his mind wander now to all the obstacles that would undoubtedly present themselves he would never be able to concentrate.

There was a rustling noise from above and Raziel spun instantly, talons held wide as he looked up into the darkening twilight above.

Dropping down to crouch there before him was one of the winged blue ancients that he had seen before, fighting Hylden scouts in the ruins of his clan territory. There could be mistaking that she was one of them as he recalled her being the one who had been hit in the soldier by a project from a Hylden weapon, that injury now bandaged with canvas clothe.

"And so we meet, strange one." She said quite formally, straightening up and tucking her wings back behind herself.

"You came to our aid against the Unspoken once before and here I find you inspiring revolution amongst the humans."

She gestured towards the Citadel, still engulfed in Chaos and smiled, a weary sort of smile that told of personality trying to find something to find amusing at the fear that if she did not she would go insane. "Clearly our interests coincide."

"For the moment, possibly." Raziel replied, cocking his head to one side and examining her.

She was a head and shoulders taller than himself and her hair was cropped back into a short ponytail. Her armour carved to fit her frame and very archaic; the blue wraith remembered seeing its style depicted in murals before. At her sides were sheathed two short blades, the hilts turned up and out for easy use.

"I am Ajatar, grandmaster of the Serioli order." She introduced herself, holding her posture erect.

"And an ancient besides." Raziel commented in return. "I had thought only Janos Audron to be the surviving member of your race."

The look of sudden despair and anguish that crossed her face at those words had not been at all what he had been expecting but she quickly mastered herself and took in a deep soothing breath.

"Then our civilisation did fall." She began, her voice forcing itself to be flat and toneless. "We had no way of verifying that when we were brought forward… but I had hoped…" She drew a cloven hand across her face as to not betray herself again.

Raziel raised an eyebrow quizzically.

"Brought forward?" He repeated in puzzlement.

Ajatar looked at him between the gaps in her talons for a moment. Then she lowered her hand began, saying slowly;

"We once lived alongside the first of the Circle of Nine and fought many battles with the uprising lead by Moebius the Time streamer." Saying the name of the now dead guardian the muscle under her left eye twitched in a reaction of suppressed hate, the feathers of her wings rustling in accompaniment.

"We might have perished there." Then she soothed herself and managed a smile "We owe our lives and our fealty to the Scion of Balance."

Raziel started, almost taking a step back in surprise.

"Kain?" He asked.

Ajatar looked equally taken aback.

"You know lord Kain?" She asked, sounding amazed. Raziel stared at her with wide eyes and after a moment let out a single burst of laughter.

"Perhaps better than anyone." He said. "Where is he?"

The look on the ancient's face in reaction was not one that inspired confidence and Raziel felt a pit forming in his stomach even before she started.

"We lost him." She said, sinking down to sit on the side of a blunted rock. "He stayed behind to ensure that our enemies did not follow us through vortex of time he opened for us."

And so she explained to him what had happened, how Kain had come back through time to seek clues that would lead him to a way to assume his destiny and had purified their sight of the Serioli so that they might fight the invisible enemy that beset them.

For them to survive Kain had taken them to Moebius' hidden chamber where the Chronoplast device would bring them forward to this time. However they had been ambushed by an army of marionettes called Homunculi and in the confusion, the Serioli had come forward and Kain had been left behind.

Her story fitted in with whatever bits and pieces left over from Kain himself that Raziel was able to recall and make sense of. Now he felt that he had a good idea of what had taken place, with a few large gaps here and there.

Exactly what happened to Kain he still did not know but at least now he knew what Kain had been doing up until his betrayal by…

As if summoned by his thought, she appeared, translocating herself to them in a luminous flash.

The Seer.

Ajatar was on her feet in a moment but the Hylden women held up a hand to restrain her.

"Fortunate indeed is this serendipitous crossroads, the three of us." She said to them both. "This will indeed make a much needed council far more remunerative."

**_"I had half expected my reaction to her second appearance would be to immediately leap upon her body, rending it apart with my bare talons. Yet the momentary cloud of Kain's inherited anger had passed and so I merely regarded her now with weary patience." _**

Raziel stared at her, noting that she was well out of reaching distance of either himself or Ajatar, giving her the option of translocation in chase of any violence.

"You are… Hylden." Ajatar said, forgetting momentarily that saying the name of the enemy race was a taboo amongst her kind.

"She is the Seer." Raziel stated flatly. Ajatar glanced to him sharply and then back to the Seer.

"And she is Grandmaster Ajatar Cadere, of the Seroli order of elemental warriors and smiths. We know of each other." The Hylden women replied, a tad warily. She turned to look fully at Ajatar. Her expression was bland but her eyes were frosty.

"Nothing to say to one of my race, Vampire?" She asked, her voice deceptively bland.

"Neither curses nor apologies." The grandmaster of the Serioli replied immediately, meeting that cold stare with one of her own. "If you are indeed **_'the'_** Seer then you would not require or desire either."

There was a moment of silence and then the Seer smiled.

"And you are correct in your assumption." She said.

The tension seems to leak out of the air around them and Raziel, who had been tightly wound to spring despite himself relaxed a little.

"Neither of you have cause to trust me." The Seer said and looked at him, holding her expression tightly to one of utter neutrality. "Especially not you, my lord saviour….but I would beg of you both to hear me out. If you would give me that much then I will provide the assistance needed by all here."

Raziel was disinclined to maintain hatred for any reason. He had learned that lesson when he had forgiven Kain for having him cast into the abyss. As Ariel had put it, **_'Those blinded by rage are by destiny ensnared,'_** and he was not going to be bitter when he had other more important things to do.

But still it was only prudent to at the very least be on his guard.

"What assistance could you offer that I would need?" He asked to this end.

"Ajatar here, if my surmising is correct, requires a defendable keep or castle… a safe place she can bring her people." The seer began.

The ancient vampire blinked and shifted, looking a tad taken aback by such deduction. Her confusion was momentary and she quickly assumed a look of unconcern. She said nothing.

"And you my lord…" The Seer then began looking at him now. "Desperately seek information on the whereabouts of Janos Audron."

Now it was his turn to be surprised. Knowing that Ajatar needed a fort might have been a guess, given her current situation but his specific intent for Janos Audron was a lot more specific.

"How did you know that?" Raziel demanded in a harsh voice.

"An immaterial concern." The Seer replied so quickly she almost interrupted him.

"If you know where he is…"

"I do not but I do know who does."

Raziel stopped himself, only now aware that he had taken a few steps towards her. The Seer was staring back at him tensely, knowing full well of how intense his anger could be and prepared now to defend herself. Ajatar was watching them both, her wings fluttering a little almost in preparation for flight.

"And you will only give me this flimsy lead if I offer you something in return?" The blue wraith queried in a cold tone.

"Perhaps at a later date." The Seer admitted. "But for right now all I desire is that you listen."

**_"I was suddenly struck by the thick and enveloping sense of déjà-vu. Had this not happened before to me? Yes... it had. I had been standing before Kain at the Pillars and he had asked me to indulge him and ask that I listen to what he had to say. I had heeded that plea once before and it had been the right choice. My instincts told me that I would take no harm from heeding it again."_**

Raziel shook himself as if to clear his thoughts and deliberately forced his entire body to relax.

Even if he not trust the source he could not turn down information that he badly needed. So he nodded to both Ajatar and the Seer and then sat down on the ground, looking at them expectantly.

Ajatar glared for a moment but then followed suite, sitting down with her wings curving around her body protectively.

Smiling, the Seer was the last to sit.

Now it was her turn to talk and they listened to her. She spoke of the Hylden and their imprisonment within the demon dimension. She told them of how her people, desperate to survive had tamed the native demons, built a scavenging empire in the otherworldly realm and had sought any way to return.

Explained in detail was the Hylden culture, of their three houses of Knowledge, Faith and War. Ruling over them all had been a high king, their general and head of state; Hash, ak, Gik.

It had been his plan to manipulate events in Nosgoth as to allow a dimensional rift to occur. This allowed the Hylden to re-enter the world and bring about the rule of the second Sarafan order.

Raziel had known of this era from Kain, who told of it in his many boastful stories he liked to tell of his fledgling years. Hearing that it had only been brought about as a result of the tampering with causality he had helped do filled Raziel with an intense chill.

He remembered the stories Kain told him vividly but had his journey through time not occurred then those stories would never have existed. Had his memories been altered along with the timeline without him even being aware of it?

The purpose of this temporary incursion, the Seer went on explaining, had been divided amongst the people.

Hash'ak'gik had wanted to use an ancient weapon called 'The Mass' to wipe out all other life in Nosgoth and claim the land there and then. His haste had cost him his life when the younger Kain confronted him at the very gate he had created.

Ishtar however, leader of the house of Faith, had opted for a more long term solution. He used those two centuries of Sarafan rule to soak radiation native to the demon dimension, into Nosgoth itself.

There that radiation, called Glyph energy, remained waiting.

When the Pillars finally crumbled here, in this time, the resulting backlash triggered the planted pockets of energy and the barrier keeping the Hylden imprisoned collapsed entirely.

And thus were the Hylden unbound, the ancient binding Janos had been so desperate to maintain had faded into nothingness.

When she ended her story, Raziel sat there a long time in a thoughtful silence.

Ajatar was stiff and rigid, her expression disapproving as if she had sat through a blasphemous lecture. She had not interrupted however and her eyes were clearly troubled.

"And so now do you understand, my lord?" The Hylden woman asked, looking at him. Raziel looked up, meeting his gaze flatly.

"The question rather should be 'what **_should_** I understand.'" He corrected her. "I understand that you are a skilled manipulator and one with their own agenda that that most likely it does not coincide with my own."

The Seer smiled whimsically in reply.

"But I fear what is lacking for me is an alternative option." Raziel concluded with a hint of bitterness. He stood up. "For the moment I will accept your story and concede that your desire is the wellbeing of your people."

Ajatar looked at him and then nodded herself, agreeing and understanding, if only grudgingly.

"And now comes the time for you to do what you said." She said, cutting through the talk to the matter that interested her. "My people require a sanctuary."

"And I will be more then happy to lead you to one." The Seer replied, curiously as she and Ajatar got to their feet.

"But first, my Lord and Saviour…" Her expression was serious and Raziel paid attention.

"Far to the south at the edge of the great ocean many of my kind gather for an expedition. They are members of the House of knowledge.

They are scholars, researchers and alchemists. They will have bodyguards but they are not skilled warriors.

Their leader is Marduk, the arch-scientist of our people. He is no fanatic like Shamash was and would be more inclined to surrender to you the knowledge you seek should the impetus be right."

Raziel paused, considering this. It was a long way from these cliffs to the Southern ocean but the trip would indeed be worth the effort if the Seer was indeed telling the truth.

"This does not mean that we are allies, Seer." He warned her, looking up.

"I do what I must, my lord." She replied. "Given how close you were to Kain, I would have thought that you would understand what that means."


	11. Journey

Raziel supposed, later while he travelled, that trusting the word of the Seer to direct him was not only stupid it was foolish. He had never trusted Moebius and the Hylden woman had proven herself to be as just as skilled a manipulator as he had been.

Still what other option did he have other than taking Nosgoth apart stone by stone to look for Janos? If there was even the slightest chance that the information she had given him was accurate then he would have to pursue it.

And what was he to make of Ajatar? She was no liar that he saw in a moment but she seemed capable of misdirection if the situation required it. He doubted not that her primary concern was for the temporally displaced Serioli and that concern was what prompted her to agree to the arrangement the Seer proposed.

The grandmaster might be the closest thing to an actual ally he could acquire in this whole mess.

Travelling south, Raziel made his way towards the ocean that was still beyond the horizon. The great southern sea was a seemingly endless expanse of water whipped by violent storms.

In the glory days of Kain's empire, there had been a few expeditions to sail further and further south to expand the known borders of the land but few had ever come back.

A few myths and legends told of far flung islands and distant shores to visit but few had paid attention to such tales. But then why was a Hylden expedition of its own on its way then?

The territory of Melchiah, the necropolis that extended across the eastern shore of the lake of tears was almost completely abandoned. The Melchiahim, without their leader to hold them together, was beginning to disband and go their separate ways.

It was the same with all of the clans. Their leaders and sires were dead and in their current animalistic state they had nothing to direct them.

It had pained Raziel afresh to see them, having now seen the elegant grace of their blue skinned ancestors. If Janos ever saw what had become of his people it might crush his spirit.

Two days since the start of his journey, Raziel left behind the towering necropolis and wandered down through slanted ground that showed signs of once having being a forest. But any vegetation had long since rotted away, starved of sunlight and nourishment. Now all that was lest was a rolling hillside full of coat like stumps that rose out of the ground like boated corpses.

Nestled in a little valley were more remains of what had once been there. The dust choked almost everything but here and there, as he past through, Raziel could see clearly the crumbling foundations of buildings.

There had once been a small village here, perhaps a town in the forest on an important trade route.

Suddenly he stopped, standing in the centre of the dusty ruin and looks around him afresh. There was no danger here but a deep sense of importance, as if this ruined place was of great significance.

It took the blue wraith a moment to pick the reason why out of his memories.

**_"The ruins of this town, now abandoned and left to be claimed by the elements, was hardly a remarkable milestone at first glance. I however knew of its true significance."_**

He blinked and looked around again, this time noting the position of the buildings and the location of this ruin in relation to the rest of the land.

Yes, he was right. There could be no doubt as to what this place was.

**_"This decayed stump of rock had once been the wayside town of _****_Ziegsturhl_****_. It was here that Kain's mortal human life had ended. Brigands hired by the Necromancer Mortanious had trapped the young nobleman and brought him down in a flurry of sword blades."_**

It had all started here; everything, the set of events that would shape the world and time itself.

Raziel tried to picture it in his minds eye, imagining how the village might have looked back then and what he knew from listening to Kain's old stories. He imagined the tall pine forest around him and the wooden and stone buildings, returned to life with villagers coming and going about their business.

The scene he had conjured was so simple, so mediocre and so humble that he nearly burst out laughing. The great and mighty Kain, he who would claim this world and make it his own, had started the career of his un-life here.

No glorious start to such a tremendous journey but a common occurrence on a highway riddled with banditry, a murdered nobleman forgotten about by the local populace as soon as he had been interred.

Raziel felt the laughter bubble up inside him and he could not stop it. This was the great joke played on them all and he simply let his head roll back and let the laughter out, almost falling back in his humor.

If Kain's murder in this place had not come to pass then none of what had occurred since to them all would be.

Raziel would have remained in his crypt, entombed with the other Sarafan warriors.

Janos Audron would still be lying on a stone slab in the decayed ruins of Vorador's mansion.

Kain himself would have lived out his life as a human and died of old age, lying in a bed surrounded by a grieving and loving family.

That last preserve image sent Raziel off again into gales of almost hysterical laughter and it was some time before he was able to get himself back under control. What would Kain himself have thought of that notion?

**_"The People of this town had then buried his body in a nearby crypt, where the Necromancer had found and revived him using the Heart of Darkness."_**

As if mention of the heart in the vaults of his mind was a sharp prod from someone to pay attention, Raziel stopped laughing and stood up a little straighter.

He was still a long way from the coast and the sun was beginning to set again, a pale orb through the still thick smoke in the skies.

**_"The Heart… Janos… I am wasting time here."_**

And so he left the ruins and their joke behind and started out again. It was not the past he had to be mindful of now but the future.

This creed served him well for not long after that he became aware that he was being followed.

His pursuers made little effort to hide the fact from him. He could hear their feet in the dust a short way behind him and one of them was clearly not used to long distance running and was breathing hard.

Quickly Raziel darted behind a rock and waited, sniffing at the air and letting the wind carry the warning scent to him.

Vampiric without a doubt and if his memory served him correct, then it was the smell of hungry Dumahim.

Then he could see them. About four of them, a small hunting pack of adults. Their gait was like that of a lopping dog, galloping forward with their large forearms helping them along through the dust.

There was no way he was going to be able to hide from them they had already seen him and clearly hungry they were not going to let him simply slip away.

As such the only method of dealing with them was to strike fast and carry that advance as long as it would stretch.

When they turned a corner, Raziel dove from concealment in a roll. In that same action he picked up a fist sized rock and when he came to his feet he threw it towards the leading vampire.

It hit him straight in the head and the Dumahim collapsed to the ground with a loud cry, clutching at the injury in his thick skull.

The other three slowed, clearly surprised by the sudden attack. That had been the opening Raziel had been waiting for.

He tore straight at them, talons spreading wide and cleaving through flesh straight down to the bone.

When fighting vampires he knew that without a weapon his only option was to not give them a chance to regenerate from their wounds, he had to keep attacking and attacking and to hit something vital inside.

Another Dumahim went down, wounded but not fatally. It lashed out at Raziel with his own talons, trying to cut him across the chest. But the blue wraith was too fast and easily dodged the swipe.

He arched up and down slammed down, his talons stabbing through the large chest and into the heart. The body beneath him quivered but made no sound as it died, already turning to ash even before Raziel withdrew his talons.

Another rushed in from the side, catching Raziel across the shoulder. Its jaws opening and its snake like second mouth emerged, a hideous appendage that snapped at his face as if attempting to pluck out his eyes.

Raziel grabbed a hold of it in one hand and yanked back, tearing the thing out from the mouth in a spray of blood.

The Dumahim screamed in pain, the sound a gargling for its mouth filled with his own blood.

The other two tried to come at him from behind, lunging together in an attempt to catch him from behind. Raziel sensed their attack and ducked, rolling backwards and knocking their feet out from under them.

The two vampires went down together face first into the dirt. Before one of them could rise, Raziel was on him with talons stabbing. One stab, two and then a third, the fourth once bursting through the rib cage to the heart and the body was then still.

Enraged by the loss of another hunting pack-mate the uninjured one of the two left circled Raziel warily, joined soon by its fellow who as in the process of healing the wound it had suffered.

Vampiric regeneration had its limits. It could close flesh as soon as it was cleaved and even grow back small parts of the body, but vampires could not re-grow entire limbs. The second mouth was just within this range and Raziel could see it beginning to slowly reform.

He was the one two attacked first, leaping high into the air and diving at them. They tried to dive out of the way but his talons caught them across the sides, stunning them with the pain of the strike. Raziel rebounded of the ground and came at them again, slicing up through one ribcage tearing bone with a hideous grating noise.

This time Raziel did not simply stab the heart but he grabbed it, his talons gripping it tighly before he yanked it out and held it high.

Screaming the Dumah fell back, its body collapsing into dust and the heart in Raziel's hand following suit not long after. The devolution of the clans was so acute it seemed that their bodies could not even hold themselves together after death.

The remaining Dumahim, now alone, clearly was beginning to think that there was easier prey elsewhere.

But without its pack to support it in hunting its chances for survival were slim. As such its decision to remain and fight was not so much a mindless savagery but rather a resignation of the inevitable.

When the business was done, the four released souls provided Raziel with the energy necessary to replenish his own strength and to stockpile a surplus should he require it later.

"I wonder…" He began, speaking to himself as he turned to carry on. "… what would my clan have devolved into had they had the opportunity?"

Ziegsturhl had been a town relaying trade from the coastal settlements to the inland cities and sure enough when he looked for it he did indeed find the remains of a road. It was barely distinguishable and vanished entirely in some places but there was enough for him to follow south and later that night as he crested a hill he saw the distant curving outline of the sea.

In the empire, few vampires had traveled on the water if they could avoid it and the crews of those ships had been human slaves. The only navy Kain had been interested in was one sufficient to allow for defense of important ports. With the vampiric weakness to water this was well understandable.

The darkness of night was almost all encompassing now, not even moonlight keeping the land and sea illuminated.

There was another settlement down there, the city of Freeport. That had been a fortress port in Kain's empire, ruled by the Ruhabim clan. He could make just make out its shape against the increasing darkness of the sky.

There was a guiding light however. Down by the water's edge and along by the city itself, there were more than a dozen faint green orbs of light, going back and forth and seeing from this distance like fireflies. Raziel had seen such lights before, carried by Hylden soldiers while on night patrol.

**_"Just as the Seer told me, there at the edge of Nosgoth and the beginning of the sea I fought more Hylden. In this instance at least her story held true."_**

He took a step forward but then he checked himself, stiffening and looking down at the lights with more caution.

**_"I quickly resolved however that this could be a trap and that prudent investigations were required before I simply went for any throats." _**


	12. Evolution

The black cloak of night provided an excellent cover as Raziel approached the abandoned city, slipping silently towards the green lights.

As he approached he discerned the individual shapes of Hylden alongside the atop the walls. There were not that many of them, he counted about thirty.

.

.

**_"Again the Seer's words seemed to be bearing true. These Hylden, with a few puffed up exceptions, were not at all warriors. They were far less toned and talked with each other a great deal on matters that I did not understand." _**

**_._**

**_._**

There was a ship in dock at the city, the only vessel there. Of it's like Raziel had never seen before. It was made entirely of metal, sleek and elegant with long sweeping back fans towards the back that dipped into the water. The whole ship almost had the appearance of a swan, a graceful, elegant gliding creature.

He did not pause to admire the design but pressed on, coming close enough to hear the voices echoing from those working.

The Hylden were not setting themselves up in the city but rather they had stationed themselves in a camp along the shoreline. There were tents of many sizes set up, illuminated by the light of a few fires. Stacked up were crates of supplies, most of which were being loaded by hand up into the docked ship, these Hylden needing nor desiring the use of slaves to accomplish their tasks.

Clearly they did not mean to stay long. The camp's temporary nature was quite apparent and it was entirely possibly that they intended to set sail at first light tomorrow morning.

This might be the best chance Raziel had to getting in to see this Marduk. Cautiously he began to approach the camp but as he did so a deepening sense of dread began to fill him, a horrible creeping sensation that held him in the grasp of an intensifying fear.

This was a palpable thing so strong he could almost taste it. It slowed his steps until he was standing still.

Something ahead, only just within that camp was repelling him and driving him away. He truly felt that to come close to whatever it was could mean his death, his final death.

Raziel had felt this once before and knew instantly what it meant.

Mastering his uneasy he began forward purposely keeping to the shadows as he moves behind the tents. From his position he could see directly into the centre of the camp and his fears were instantly verified.

.

.

**_"But this was something extremely different from what the Seer had told me to expect."_**

**_._**

**_._**

Three Hylden were bowing, almost grovelling to a fourth who had his back turned to Raziel but even so the blue wraith knew who he was.

.

.

**_"Ishtar was here."_**

**_._**

**_._**

The leader of the Hylden house of faith was still clothed in his strange leather and red silk outfit. His hood was up and he and was saying something to those other Hylden before him. Raziel could not make out their words over the crackling of the nearby fire but the Hylden leader seemed to be giving orders.

Those before him bowed once more before ushering him forwards towards the largest tent. Ishtar ducked inside and out of sight.

.

.

**_"I could sense, even from this distance, that he had still the Nexus Stone still with him. A brief pang of panic spread through me that I was quick to repress. I was by no means anxious to confront the leader of the house of faith again." _**

**_._**

**_._**

The Nexus Stone, the only artefact that had brought him close to complete oblivion. Not even the curse of the Reaver had promised utter annihilation as the stone did.

The fear the stone put in him he would not tolerate however. Raziel would not be enslaved to the terror of what might be again. Almost savagely he forced the emotion side and forced himself to look at the problem logically.

He had to know why Ishtar was here. The Seer had not seen fit to tell him this, if she had indeed known, and it could very well be crucial to his own safety.

Raziel waited briefly and then slipped slowly around the edge of the camp, not letting any of the working Hylden see him. Quietly he slipped in between the stacks of crates, his speed allowing him to move swiftly and silently.

Kain could never manage this kind of stealth; he was more of a direct frontal attack fighter while Raziel's slender frame and dark colouration had made him more than adept for sneaking.

Quietly he reached the back of the large tent Ishtar had entered. From outside he could hear voices, quiet conversation that was muffled by whatever lay between him and the speakers.

He had to get closer, all the while risking discovery by Ishtar whose stone could cause him great harm.

Deciding to take a chance the blue wraith gently lifted up one end of the tent and slipped inside. He remained there crouched behind some concealing containers. Through the gaps he could make out two Hylden, one was Ishtar and the other was so thin that he appeared to be little more than bones. All Hylden appeared lean but this one was all bone and sinew, but strangely he had a large barrel like chest and this combination of strange features gave him a top heavy appearance.

He was hunched over and seemed to have a hump on his back, concealed by a draping blue cloak fastened around his neck. Like Ishtar he wore gold jewellery but his was far more practically arranged than the more fanciful kind framing Ishtar's head. His eyes were what really set him apart. Most Hylden Raziel had seen had glowing green eyes but this one did not. His were a calm, milky white with a blue orb in the centre.

"I can not see why the death of Shamash should trouble me, Ishtar." He was saying with a shrug. His voice had a faint tone to it, high pitched but very soft.

"He was a sadistic fool too pre-occupied by his need for battle to see the big picture. I do not think I will loose much sleep over his death."

Ishtar was staring at him, disapproval clear on his face.

"And besides…" The thin one added with something of a mocking smile. "The return of Raziel is a theological matter and that's falls, I believe, under your jurisdiction."

Ishtar twitched an eyebrow at the jab and set his lips in a deep frown before he replied.

"You are an intelligent being, Marduk." He said, with a slightly emphasis on the words to imply that given the other's opinion that statement might not hold true. "Surely you can understand the effect his return will have upon our people."

The thin Hylden, Marduk, turned away and glanced at a map stretched across a temporary wooden wall at one side of the tent. It showed the coastline of Nosgoth in great detail, along with several isolated islands in a large archipelago that stretched from west to east.

"Do not simply shrug this off." Ishtar said sharply. "We have worked too hard for all our careful preparations and plans to be overturned by a last minute unforeseen development, a rogue religious figure."

The leader of the house of faith swung his arms wide in a dramatic gesture. As he did so Raziel caught a glance of his front and sure enough, as he had sensed, there was the Nexus stone. The mere sight of it chilled him but he did not immediately experience the dramatic weakness he had before. Quite possibly the stone needed conscious direction for it to work on him.

"Once Nosgoth is purged by the Ziggurat and our colonies secure, THEN we can relax but not a moment before." He followed Marduk's gaze to the map and back again. "As such, I strongly advise against this expedition right now."

Marduk let out a very long, deep sigh.

"Your advice is welcome but not needed." He said, sounding quite tired. "Raziel… prophecy…" He dismissed such concerned with a wave of his bony hand. "Both inconsequential to the advances I am making."

Ishtar's face contorted in disgust.

"Forever tinkering…" He muttered and looked the leader of the house of Knowledge up and down disdainfully.

"We're all trapped on an island." Marduk said metaphorically, pressing the matter with something of a sneer. "Believers sit on the beach worshipping the sea. Philosophers sit on the beach debating whether or not there is a sea. Scientists build boats." He gestured with a toss of his head towards the ocean and the waiting ship.

"Look at yourself Marduk, because of your experiments your body can hardly stand up by itself anymore." Ishtar snapped.

Marduk held his gaze and then, suddenly, he laughed.

"Can it not?" He asked. "Oh my dear friend, you see only what I want you to see."

Ishtar cocked an eyebrow at him questioningly and even Raziel felt himself a least partially curious.

"Forgive my saying so but it is I who will reward the faith our people have held to for so long, reveal to them their destiny." Marduk was slowly unfastening the cord that held his cloak across his back. "Their evolution."

Ishtar took his meaning before Raziel did, who was still staring in puzzled confusion.

"Marduk… can you mean what I think you mean?" He began in a slow voice, eyes widening.

Marduk's answering grin was utterly vicious. He undid the cord and the cloak dropped away, sliding over his bent back to the floor.

There was no hump there as Raziel had first thought. Across his back were thin, long finger like appendages that ran from his shoulder blades to his calves. They were folded, tucked tightly against each other and joined by membranous skin.

Then it was clear, even before Marduk spread them out Raziel knew.

The wings were magnificent, a wing span of a full twelve feet at least. They were bat like, but far tougher reinforced with bunched muscle and sinew. The important joints were even shielded by what would only be scales, or at least it seemed to Raziel. They folded over each other, overlapping to form a protective but flexible defence.

Now fully revealed Marduk was no longer strangely portioned but perfectly shaped. He had a light body to make himself lighter in the air and his large barrel chest housed the muscles and powerful heart needed for powered flight.

.

.

**_"I could not believe what I was seeing. Wings… Hylden with wings. But it was not only that which shook me down to my very soul. Their wings were mine, or at the very least similar. How was this possible? How had my own evolving dark gift mirrored that of the Hylden? Questions unanswered burned through me."_**

**_._**

**_._**

Reminded intently of his own wings, Raziel's hand went back unconsciously to brush briefly through the flapping remains behind him. He had flown only once with his adaptation before showing himself to Kain and the sensation of flight was one he would never forget.

Ishtar, with his face full of wonder, started forward. He was visibly trembling as he traced the outlines of the wings.

"How have you…" He started almost in a whisper. Marduk remained firm.

"Science can do many things that religion can not." He replied. Ishtar turned to face him slowly.

"You forced your own evolution?"

Raziel could barely hear their conversation, his eyes fixed on the wings before him. It brought back sharply all of the wonder, all of the joy, all of the pain and horror. He was paralysed by the memories that he had kept subdued for such a long time.

"Not without paying a hefty toll." Marduk lifted a hand, looking at the withered muscles with a wry but sad expression. "Generations of varying adaptations are not to be made up in a single day."

Then he lifted his head to look up as if he could see through the roof of the tent and to the night sky above.

"But I can fly and that gift will overcome any demoralization a renegade messiah can throw at us."


	13. Voyage

The ship made no sound as it moved through the water, the gleaming and curved metal bow slicing through the waves with ease. It sailed without sails or oars, moving silently out to sea.

Ishtar stood only long enough on the shore to watch the ship depart before he turned and in mid stride, disappeared into a portal conjured by the magic of the Nexus Stone. After seeing the wings Marduk has presented he had made no further argument against the expedition and simply let them go.

The supplies had been loaded onboard, the scholars as well as their bodyguards also. As soon as first light touched the distance horizon the ship had departed.

"South by south west." One of the Hylden scholars said, checking the course they were taking away from the shore. "At present speed we will keep to our schedule."

Behind him, Marduk nodded in satisfaction. His blue cloak again covered him, hiding his wings from view but the students around him kept casting glances. They knew what he was hiding under there.

"What is our estimated time of arrival, cousin?" He asked, not paying the looks any sort of attention but conscious of them all the same.

"Three days." Was the reply and again Marduk nodded.

"Very good." He then turned and made towards the door leading down into the ship's interior. His gait was hunched over as if he were an old man, but actually brought about by the extra weight he carried on his back ."I will remain in my cabin for the journey."

Before he could retire below, one of the Hylden scholars cleared his throat and stepped forward to stop him.

"Maestro …" The new speaker began awkwardly. Marduk only turned his head, his expression questioning. "A number of us have been wondering… when...." He broke off.

"When will I announce the secret to evolving ones own set of wings?" Marduk finished for him. Behind him on his back, the blue cloak rustled as the limbs within shifted to new resting positions.

The Hylden all around stared, caught up in a spectacular cultural awe. It was no secret that the potential for flight lay in their evolution but so far the only natural advancement had been stretched skin on bone limbs that had permitted little more than limited gliding. This was something more, something out of legend almost, the ancient promise brought to life before their eyes.

"Yes maestro." The speaker admitted in a hushed whisper.

As if to tease them all, Marduk lifted his cloak a little and his wings stretched and then settled back.

"When the process is feasible on a larger scale." He declared, looking back over his shoulder to take them all in. "I know my process works but the price paid is a high one." He paused to grimace, letting his wings settle back and grunting with the effort. "It requires further development before I entrust it to others."

There was a long silence and then the one who had spoken lowered his head in resignation.

"I understand, maestro." He declared.

As the ship past by the last few rocky outcroppings of shore, Raziel observed their passage with a brooding eye.

.

**_"This journey took us out onto the ocean, adrift on the waves as the Hylden ship slowly made its way south. Within a day we were out of sight of the shore and any I was left, a fleeting and stealthy shadow onboard a ship of potential enemies."_**

.

He was in a bad humour. The revelation of Hylden wings, his wings, had unnerved him. Not because he felt challenged, being robbed of his own wings for so long had made that consideration moot. But that this was yet another piece of evidence that made him more like the Hylden then the vampires.

Perhaps, despite fulfilling both roles in the prophecy, he was more closely related to the Hylden. That was as something he did not care for very much at all. But then, if he were forced to consider the matter logically, why should it bother him? The Hylden were no different from other races really. Their imprisonment in the demon dimension had warped them in varying degrees but apart from that they were not demons.

In any case neither the humans or, if he was forced to admit it, the vampires were any different. Each race had evils, each had destructive dark side.

If he were to set aside all the bias' and preconceptions Janos had given him and look at the Hylden, see them for what they truly where.

A people who had endured hell itself for thousands of years, coming together and surviving to get them to a promised land where they might prosper.

After a long and grudging battle with his own bitter thoughts, Raziel was finally forced to admit that the only problem he had with the Hylden were their methods.

The realisation brought him no peace of mind.

.

**_"It was not long before hunger made itself known to me. In so many ways I was still a vampire and I would not be able to maintain my physical manifestation without the energy of devoured souls. I dared not however, for the sudden absence of any of these Hylden would immediately be noticed."_**

.

He had been fortunate that he had a surplus of energy from an earlier feeding to rely on. If not the long trip would have been much longer indeed.

Still as time began to tick away, his supply began to dwindle. Raziel did not know where they were going or particularly much curiosity to find out. This was Hylden business. All he wanted was a straight answer out of Marduk.

The ship itself was a maze of metal corridors and storage chambers. Quickly Raziel understood that this ship was powered by machines that required little in the way of oversight. As such the crew was nearly non existent, the only force to be reckoned with where the bodyguards these scholars had brought with them.

.

**_"Marduk remained closeted in his cabin and did not emerge even once. The only entrance was a single door that was bared and guarded at all times. He took his personal safety very seriously it seemed." _**

.

Raziel was once again a wraith, flittering from one end of the ship to the other never seen and never heard. He tired many times to enter that cabin secretly but each time he met with failure. He had tried from above, from below and even from outside climbing across the ships hull. There seemed to be no way in except for that single door.

Having no other choice but to be patient, he resigned himself. Marduk would not stay in there forever. Eventually he would come out; perhaps when they got to where they were going, all he had to do was wait.

Waiting however seldom passes by without the chance for critical reflection. Days were beginning to role by, the ship never wavering on its course. He could not imagine what they sought out here beyond the shores of the mainland. The only land known to be out here were little pieces of scattered and broken rock, not worth the trouble of going.

Soon he began to wonder what had become of Kain.

Was he dead?

Even as that thought past through him, some deep instinct twisted inside him rejecting the possibility.

It was a childish reaction to an unpleasant fact but he clung to it anyway. Surely Kain, of all men, would find a way to survive anything.

The Seer had betrayed him; that she admitted, but betrayed him to what? The memories left over from Kain were too fragmented and hazy to learn much from. Whatever the Seer had abandoned him to was something strong enough to duel with Kain as an equal and defeat him. There were few beings in Nosgoth capable of doing that and none of them would have gotten the drop on him that way.

No… it would have to have been something, or someone new, who Kain had not been expecting.

Whoever it had been must have caught the vampire completely by surprise.

Kain must have had no way of developing a coherent defence before he had been struck down.

Could Kain have survived such an ambush?

Before Raziel could ponder the answer to this question there was a series of loud splashing noises and a hoarse roar, a familiar sound that have him alert instantly. The ship tilted to one side, shuddering with the unexpected addition of weight.

"By the Keeper, what are they!?" A Hylden voice screamed; almost drowned out by the guttural wet growls that seemed to be getting louder.

Raziel was already scrambling out of his hiding place.

Hylden were running across the deck, the guards called out all of them with drawn weapons in their hands. In the chaos Raziel could have walked right out on deck and not have been noticed, their attention wholly captured by whatever was going on.

He kept to the shadow however, sliding across the far side of the vessel.

The guards were fighting something that was trying to come up over the railing, jabbing at whatever it was with long pikes and others shooting with their alien rifles.

Whatever it was doing was not enough, there seems to be a horde of claws and reaching webbed hands trying to come up over the railing.

The scholars stood back, all of them armed with whatever they had to fight with, which was not an impressive arsenal.

"Vampires!"

The moment of them of them yelled that Raziel became immediately interested. Swiftly he climbed out onto the bow of the ship, swinging out so he could peer around and see what was happening directly.

.

**_"They were right. These creatures were vampires indeed and I knew what kind, the only sort that could possibly be out here on the waves."_**

.

They were sleek creatures, streamlined with slimy translucent skin. Gils opened alongside of heads that fanned out like a cobra frill, ending in sort ugly snouts. Then their lips parts, they revealed a mouth full of sharp teeth, with two long sets of fangs that curved out and snapped together with an audible clacking.

Their hands and feet were webbed, talons transformed into striking short claws for rending prey underwater.

In pairs they tried to assail the ship, snarling and snapping at the Hylden who tried to drive them back but there always seemed to be more coming up to take their place.

**_"The children of my brother, Rahab." _**

The Ruhabim, vampires adapted so well to such adverse conditions that they had actually overcome the acidic touch of water. Like their father, the monstrously deformed Rahab, they had devolved into little more than animals so lurks in stagnant water to ambush prey and drag it under.

Without Rahab to hold them together, they had wandered out using whatever waterway they could find to expand their hunting territory.

Now they had spread into the open ocean and adapted again, coming together as a pack to attack the ship.

Turning, Raziel looked over at the far side of the deck where, just as he expected came more of them, climbing up over the unguarded railing while their fellows provided a distraction.


	14. Teacher

**_"Animals… predators… that was the fate of the vampires native to this time. Having inherited the corruption of Nuraptor through Kain the clans had devolved, adapting to their environments but loosing their rational minds. The Rahabim had overcome the acidic touch of the water but their tolerance to sunlight was now so flimsy they were confined to being almost entire nocturnal." _**

.

.

.

"Is this what has become of the vampires in all this time?"

"I.. I never imagined they would revert to this…"

"Its no less than they deserve."

"Look at them, it's horrible."

The buzz of disgusted conversation ran through those watching the Rahabim. Some looked on them with plain disgust, others in macabre fascination. As such, it was only a chance noise from the far side of the deck that alerted the crew to the attack from behind.

Spinning about, one of the guards saw the aquatic vampires surge over the side of the deck attempting to catch them from behind. With an angry shout he whirled, firing back over the heads of the startled scholars to blast a vampire directly in the chest. The Rahabim fell back to the floor of the deck with a high pitched squeal, the shot scorching through his body until it reached the heart. The other continued around it, hardly even noticing the loss of their fellow.

"They're coming onboard, quickly kill them!" The guards formed another defensive barrier, whatever could be spared from the first attack going to the aid of those fending off the second.

Raziel watched the fighting, finding himself poised in a crevice of indecision. His dilemma was an absurd one. Did he help one side in the fight? His aid would tip the battle one way or the other.

And if he did decide to interfere, who would he side with? The Hylden or the Rahabim?

He had no love for either side.

The blue wraith felt he should do something in response to this incident. With this his plan to remain hidden would definitely have to be abandoned. He could not remain hidden in this chaos.

But he did not know what to do until he looked over to see more Hylden coming out from below decks to rush to the aid of their fellows.

It was possible that if he helped cause enough carnage on deck then Marduk would eventually be forced to come out of his sealed cabin to defend his ship. Once he did Raziel could have him down in a moment.

It was a crude plan but promised results and results were what counted.

His mind made up, Raziel leapt forward from the bow of the ship and came down into the back of one of the Hylden guards. His talons bit down deep into the flesh but instead of cutting he flowed down into the body, using the gift he had taken from Shamash to merge with the body and usurp it for his own.

The Hylden body jerked left and right in resistance but soon he had it under his control. Once he did Raziel whirled around and began firing into the other guards with the rifle the hijacked body still held.

Two went down, struck in the head with their skulls exploding into bloody fragments with pieces of brain flying off in all directions.

Using this opening, the Ruhabim charged past the defences to attack the startled Hylden crew behind.

Some of the vampires had even climbed up to high positions on the railing. From those vantage points they reared back their heads, their frills vibrating before their vomited forth water they were holding inside their throats. Water, projected at a high pressure, has just as much force behind it as a cannon ball.

Several Hylden were knocked from the side of the side, falling over the rail and into the waves. Even as they struck the waves, slimy arms with webbed hands reached out to drag them struggling under the surface.

"Cousin, what are you doing?!" One of the guards asked, reaching and grasping the body Raziel was operating by the arm.

At that joint Raziel abandoned the body, surging up out of the corpse and lashing out with his talons. They sliced through the flesh of the neck and sent the head flying off.

The two bodies dropped down to the ground, one with a neck stump pumping blood over the deck and the other turning to dust.

Seeing him as simply another potential meal, a vampire to one side disengaged from the fight with the Hylden and lunged at Raziel. He side stepped, arching backwards and catching the Rahabim across the chin with his foot. The kick knocked the creature backwards and as it stumbled, Raziel sent a projectile of telekinetic force into its head. The impact was enough to cause the head to explode.

Raziel went into the melee, killing indiscriminately. He wanted as much bloodshed on either side as possible. He brought down Vampires and Hylden alike, sparing neither side until blood began to drip off the sides of the deck to fall into the ocean. More Rahabim swam along in its wake like a school of sharks.

Eventually he was rewarded for his efforts. Marduk did indeed come out on deck, squeezing up out from below followed by two scholars at either side.

Fighting him coming, Raziel broke the neck of the Hylden he was fighting and spun about to face him.

Marduk's gaze was on the general carnage and so he did not see Raziel, who dropped the corpse and quickly began making his way across the deck.

Two vampires stood between them also making for Marduk as their intended prey. The guards who surrounded Marduk blocked their path, ready to fend them off.

Raziel attacked from behind, plunging his talons in the unsuspecting back of the first and reaching through to stab its heart.

As the second turned around to face the new threat, Raziel lashed out with a kick that connected with its chest. There was a loud sound of snapping bones and the Ruhabim fell backwards, squirming and crying out in pain.

Now Marduk had seen him.

"You!" he began in genuine surprise as Raziel finished off the floored vampire, crushing its skull with a stamp. "Here?!"

His bodyguards were just as alarmed and drew in close, as if to seek safety in numbers. Raziel turned to face them, his narrowed eyes glowing intimidatingly.

Marduk's expression was one of mixed awe and amazement, but strangely no fear. He looked as if he were merely studying a new type of unique animal he had discovered.

"I had almost not believed Ishtar…. Remarkable..." He breathed, his eyes wandering over the ruined blue body noting every detail.

Then he noticed the tattered ruins of membrane fluttering out the back and he frowned, a look of sincere pity passing in his eyes.

Only a being who could fly could understand the despair loosing that gift could cause.

"A pity about your own wings really. I would have loved to compare your morphology to mine."

Raziel started forward.

"Maestro! Get back!" One of the bodyguards started, stepping forth to block the path of the blue wraith with his pike.

"Out of my way." Raziel told him in a savage undertone. At the moment he was all bravado. He was unnumbered by enemies on this ship but he hoped that his reputation with the Hylden was sufficient to make them think twice about fighting him.

Unfortunately, Marduk was wise enough to see through his bluff.

"Stand aside, cousin." The leader of the house of knowledge said, brushing past his guards to confront Raziel directly. His face was lined but set and grim.

For a moment they stared at each other wordlessly, the sounds those of the fighting going on around them.

"I care nothing for your students or your intent." Raziel began then, gesturing with a nod of his head to the ship and those onboard. "I have come here in pursuit of one thing. Give me that and you can continue on your way."

Slowly he raised a talon to point directly at Marduk.

"Where is Janos Audron?"

The Hylden stared first at the talon pointed at them and then let his gaze slowly drift up the arm and back to Raziel's face.

He took in a deep breath and then let it out.

"This is one of the few instances in which Ishtar and I are in agreement." He said slowly, reaching up to unfasten his blue cloak. "We owe you nothing. If you are so determined to find the Audron…"

The cloak slide off his back down to the deck and as it fell away, the great wings fanned out to either side. The bodyguards all around pulled back, giving their leader room to spread his magnificent limbs. Even Raziel found himself admiring them again despite himself.

Marduk flapped them several times, slowly his body lifting itself up off of the deck.

"…then do it yourself."

Marduk appeared old and frail, almost decrepit. As such Raziel was not prepared for the sudden rush of wing and bone that came flying at him, a blur of movement that shot forward catching him up and tearing him away.

The blow as Marduk caught him left him so stunned that he had been carried clear of the ship before he even knew what had happened.

Desperately he clawed at the Hylden and Marduk let him go without resistance. Released, Raziel tumbled down in the air several feet before he caught him and taking hold of his wings began to glide.

The ship was below, far below, those fighting on the deck mere dots from this distance.

Glancing around he could see Marduk. He was flying around in an arch high above, observing Raziel's only means of keeping himself aloft. Like a hunting bird, waiting to strike.

Marduk was tremendous to behold in the air, every part of him economically rebuilt for the graceful art of flying.

It was in this moment that Raziel perceived, comparing that graceful flight to his clumsy gliding, that he was hopelessly outclassed.

Marduk dived at him again, going so fast he might have been an arrow shot from a bow. He came down so swiftly all Raziel could do to avoid the strike was to let himself fall.

He was not quick enough to avoid the strike entirely and got hit across the back by a arching kick as Marduk fly overhead.

The Hylden circled, coming back for another approach.

.

**_"I had not expected such speed and dexterity, such unrivalled acrobatic skilled. Once in the air this Hylden was more than a match for me." _**

.

With his arms preoccupied keeping his wings steady the blue wraith could not even defend himself. Marduk struck at him again, and again, each blow only marginally avoided.

Desperately Raziel tried to get back to the deck of the ship, realising that solid ground was the only means of even having a defence. Marduk however did not let him get back. He harried Raziel over and over, striking so often Raziel could actually feel his reserves of energy drop.

He was in real trouble now. The journey on the ship had starved him and now this opponent, who he would have had difficulty with under the best of circumstances, was finishing him off.

He glanced down at the water.

Rahabim infested.

With no other choice left he prepared to drop directly into it but Marduk got to him first. The Hylden swung into him, ploughing through and carrying Raziel several feet as they plunged towards the ocean together.

They struggled as they fell, Marduk's hands around Raziel's throat and Raziel with his talon scratching into Marduk's flesh drawing blood.

Eventually the Hylden let go, spinning up into the air.

The skirmish was more than Raziel could bar. He could feel himself already slipping.

As such the next blow was the last.

Marduk flew in fast with his fist drawn back, gathering tremendous momentum and so when the punch connected with Raziel's face it was sufficient to break him.

.

**_"Unable to avoid the attack I was thrown back through the air, broken and beaten, my body screaming out in pain and my weakened reserves of energy were not enough to maintain my physical form."_**

**_._**

As he fell, Raziel's physical body broke apart and he slipped back into the Spectral Realm. The air around him turned green and the water became darker and far more ominous looking.

When he met with it however, Raziel kept on falling, the substance as thin as air in this reality and with no power to slow his decent even a little. He fell for such a long time, unable to stop himself.

When he finally collided the sea floor there was surprisingly little pain, only an intense feeling of impact. Nothing was moved by his landing, not even the silt on the ground. Nothing that belonged in the physical world could be moved here, it was all merely shadows.

Raziel lay there, breathing hard and staring up at the water's surface high above. Even here he felt the pain of his defeat incapacitate him. He did not try to fight it, but instead he remained still allowing his body to soak up any ambient energy it could to repair the damage.

"If only…" He began to himself, closing his eyes as if to sleep. "If only I could have been allowed to have kept my wings…" 


	15. Keeper

The only sounds were the disembodied cries and moans of lost souls in the distance. The only way to measure the passage of time being the distant sun overhead, the only thing of the physical world apparently permitted to move in this realm.

Raziel did not know exactly how long he had laid there before he could summon the will power to get up. It must have been at least until morning as when he finally dragged his stiffened body up, the sun was already high above once more.

The Spectral realm was as dank and endless as ever, everything seen through a green miasma and a strange kaleidoscopic tunnel vision.

.

**_"I found myself trapped in the spiritual realm, with no means to escape it while I wandered the ocean floor."_**

.

Weakened, Raziel hunted for the energy necessary to restore himself. He found that in a pack of foraging Slaugh. There were four of them, lurking around the ancient and sunken remains of a galleon. They were feeding on a few souls that they were sucking away from the wreck, devouring the energy they provided.

Raziel watched them for a time and found himself wondering about them. He had once come across creatures called 'wraiths'. They were the spirits of vampires that had been trapped in the spirit realm for too long, morphing into hideous demonic creatures that were devours of souls like himself.

Where sluagh the same? Had they once been human perhaps? If that was true what about all the other creatures of this place, the Archons that the Elder used to hunt for him or his crab like dreadnaughts?

The theory was not a pleasant one to contemplate, to think that the end result of death was eternity in a dark place where you either fed or were feed upon and if you lived it was a warped parody of what you had been.

Setting those thoughts aside he moved forward quickly and set into the small group. Sluagh were not strong creatures, used to devouring souls that could not fight back. Four of them were little challenge.

The blue wraith devoured them down, drawing them down and swallowing them. Their energy merged with his and bolstered it, renewing his strength and vitality. Once he was done he finished by consuming several of the lost ambient souls around the wreck, stockpiling his reserves. He had to be well prepared for when he caught back up with Marduk.

.

**_"The ship had been sailing south west. With the mainland far behind me I resolved to press on and follow. Marduk would not evade my questioning again."_**

.

His desire to catch the leader of the house of knowledge was not mere stubbornness nor even a need to chastise him for a humiliating defeat.

Raziel had been watching his face when he had declared his intent and the Hylden had flinched at the mention of Janos' name. He was certain now that Marduk knew were Janos Audron was.

He was turning, about to begin again on his journey when he stopped in mid stride catching sight of something out of the corner of his eye; a faint, luminous object that hovered just on the edge of his vision.

He turned to try and see it clearly, but each time it evaded his gaze as is teasing with him. It was growing stronger, more pronounced and tangible.

Then it seemed to manifest there before him, coming together to condense into the form of a human woman.

The spectre floated back and forth, not a lost soul but clearly an intangible spirit that glowed with a faint white light. Raziel knew who it was even before it had turned its luminous beautiful face to look at him.

**_._**

**_"And there she was again, the shade of Ariel. She floated free, as if a leaf tossed on the wind her face drifting from restored perfection to skeletal damnation and back again."_**

**_._**

She was face to face with him now and he could watch her face warp back and forth. He was transfixed by the eyes that looked at him.

Even when her skull appeared she was still beautiful in her own way. Raziel wondered that he had not noticed such beauty before, always distracted by her maiming.

"Ariel…" He began reaching out a hand towards her, the action so automatic that it came unbidden.

"Raziel…" Her reply was a rush of wind, a barely heard whisper. But it carried something along with it, a feeling of understanding and support, a surge of approval that he would never fine anywhere else.

He knew at once that this was not just some figment of his imagination but the real thing, Ariel herself; her shade and spirit tailing him here.

Slowly she began to drift away, silently moving west. Every now and then she spun about to watch him and then turned away again.

.

**_"I felt compelled to follow her, regardless of my own sense of purpose. It was almost as if I were entranced, like a field mouse before the snake that would consume it."_**

.

But unlike the field mouse he did not feel threatened or endangered in any way; and so he followed, walking after her neither a slow walk nor a run. The ghost of the former guardian of balance drew him on, a luminous beacon guiding him onwards. He followed her, letting her light guide him through this alien landscape on the bottom of the ocean.

She glided on, watching him follow and the expression on her face was one of awed compassion. As if she was looking past all the hard bravado that he had surrounded himself with and down directly into the core of his soul. That look of compassion filled Raziel with an intense want that he could not ignore, a powerful itch that refused to be scratched.

Eventually she led him to the foot of a large stack of rocks that loomed up high. She did not stop here but carried on, levitating up.

Raziel clambered up and over them, Ariel's glow drawing him on.

How was she here, he could not help but wonder. Had she not finally been set free form her torment, absorbed by the Reaver transforming the wraith blade and baptising it with purity?

Raziel froze then, in mid thought. Just as he had been trapped inside the sword, had she been trapped inside with him?

The blue wraith quickened his pace and ascended the top of the rocks. Beyond them was a deep valley in the sea floor that stretched away for all the way to the horizon. Its floor was littered with a thick layer of silt and the other way down was a sheer drop of a good few hundred feet.

Ariel had disappeared now, no trace of her left physically but Raziel could sense her essence lingering. It wrapped itself around him, swirling and tracing his body like a consoling touch.

"Raziel…" Her voice echoed, fading away.

"Raziel." Another voice said; this one far different from Ariel's. It was a deep resonating sound that seemed to echo up from the very ground upon which he stood. Ariel's essence disappeared in an instant as if not able to withstand that new intruding voice.

Raziel looked around in alarm, talons raised defensively. There was a new sense of presence now, something foreign and alien.

"What is this?" He demanded every part of him tensed to spring. "Who's there?"

There was a deep profound moment of silence.

"I am the opponent." The deep voice replied. Suddenly was a wrenching sound followed by a deep base a thud of something unimaginably heavy dropping down. Before him, the valley shuddered and the silt piled on its floor began to heave upwards. It rose higher and higher, shuddering up until it cascaded to either side in an avalanche of dust.

Raziel stared, stunned. Whatever was out there had the power to move objects in the spectral realm that belonged to the physical.

The silt continued to shift, rising higher and higher until finally a pair of large, impossibly large, tusks jutted out of the ground. They had to be a hundred feet long at least, curbing upwards until they brushed past the valley rim.

The head the husk were attached to was even larger and as five eyes opened to look at him, Raziel stumbled back.

The creature raised its head on a relatively snort neck and swayed, a deep rumbling coming from is colossal throat. It had the face of a whale and the body of a serpent, its skin a mix of stretched hide, scales and thick fur. Its colouration was mostly a deep violet, almost black but running down its back was a neon green fin.

Its eyes were the worst, glowing bright yellow.

Raziel was rooted to the spot, face to face with a being capable of crushing him like an ant. His instincts told him to bolt but strangely he found himself rooted to the spot.

"I am the Keeper." That same deep voice said and now it definitely seemed to be coming from the beast, but its baleen mouth did not open.

It was speaking directly into his mind.

"Long have I slept here, unable to keep up my strength." It said; shaking itself and the silt around it shivered in response. "I rouse myself only that you have come to me… the Reaver."

Finally Raziel managed to find his own voice.

"What… what are you?" It was a stupid question but the only thing his mind could grasp on to ask.

The 'Keeper', as it called itself, lowered its head and studied him closely.

"We are gods." It replied quite readily. "Entities outside the understanding of those beings limited by the corporeal and the linear."

It paused to look him over and then, apparently satisfied it straightened back up again.

"Welcome." The greeting was full of weary joy, as if a long wait was finally over.

By now Raziel had regained enough of his composure to bring back some measure of his courage.

"You know me… creature?" He demanded, keeping his eyes on the tusks that swayed back and forth as the creature turned around.

"Of course." It replied seeming not to notice the testy tone. "I know you all."

Suddenly before Raziel there manifested images, pictures that moved in mid air as if projected from somewhere else.

"Kain the disruptor." The image of Kain was there, the Reaver blade in hand laying into his enemies around him; blood flying.

"Vorador the tormentor." The vision changed and there indeed was Vorador, standing on the bluff of some unknown castle that overlooked a frothy storm whipped ocean.

"Janos the suffered." The next scene caused Raziel to catch his breath. Janos was falling, down and down his wings unable to carry him to safety. His feathers were flying away from him one by one, leaving a trail of black in his wake.

"Umah the barren." The next was a vampire that Raziel did not know, at least by face. She had curved tattoo markings across her face and was lean and fit, but still retaining great beauty in her face. She stalked the darkness of an alleyway, creeping up behind a man in armour who had not noticed her approach.

"Raziel the Reaver." And now he was there, standing there tall and proud. His tattered wings bellowed out behind him in some great wind. In the vision he raised his right hand and then the wraith blade erupted forth, forming into his grasp.

"All children, all pawns… moved across the board in a game that has been played since the beginning of life on this world."

Raziel brushed the images away with his hand and they disappeared like puffs of smoke.

"Kain is dead." He declared with some spite.

The Keeper looked down on him.

"No... he is not." It replied.

Raziel froze and snapped his head up to stare at the beast, more incredulous then he had ever been in his life.

"You mean he is alive?" The blue wraith asked, realizing even as he said it that it was a stupid question.

"Alive, but lost." The Keeper replied, swaying the large head back and forth wearily and perhaps almost drunkenly. "His sacrifice was necessary in order to bring you back. Much was made so in order to free you from the never ending ouroboros that was the fate of the sword."

Raziel shuddered at fresh reminder of the purgatory he had so recently avoided. One eon within the sword was quite enough for him.

"I request of you not to hold rancour for the Hylden seer." The creature above him asked suddenly. "She acted on behalf of her people and in demands of the necessity required by the game."

Raziel was barely even paying attention to the request, his mind working frantically. He waved his assent, not bothering with such concerns now.

"If this game is what I believe it to be…" He began slowly, his thoughts finally taking form for him to grasp. "Then it has been responsible for more death and destruction than any other cause."

He looked up challenging, despite his disadvantage of height, mass and strength.

"Tell me… you said you were an opponent. An opponent of who? Who is the player you play against?"

The Keeper did not immediately answer, his gaze fixed on him but its large eyes blinking rapidly.

"Could it be the same god that demands the submission of all other forms of life?"

Raziel found himself actually hoping that the answer would be 'no' but that was simply too much to hope for.

"You are as perceptive as Kain." The Keeper said instead, not replying to the actual question and not really needing to.

Raziel stood there for a long time simply looking at the creature. Another god, another creature like his former master?

"In losing Kain then you have lost your strongest piece." The blue wraith remarked coldly, lifting his hands.

"You threw away the king…" He dropped his left hand.

"… in exchange for the knight." He dropped his right.

The Keeper's lined face wrinkled more deeply around his eyes and Raziel found to his surprise that the giant creature was actually smiling.

"But the king can be reclaimed." It said.


	16. Obligation

Raziel stared, unblinking up at the tremendous head before him. Its eyes fixed on him, each one blinking in random succession. The Keeper was watching him, evaluating his reaction to its stunning statement.

"Do you suppose that I would simply allow Kain's death?" It asked after Raziel said nothing in reply. "He has too important a role to play for me to just give him up."

It opened its large mouth, showing a row of thin strips of baleen in something almost like a yawn. A faint luminescent glow escaped from deep inside the gigantic throat, a soft pulsing light that highlighted the lips before the mouth shut again.

"The Scion of Balance is alive and he waits your coming to retrieve him from the void."

Raziel stood there, dumbfounded and shaking. It took a few moments for him to collect his thoughts, to organize his thinking into something coherent, but his mind swirled. None of this was fitting into place in his mind.

"Why should I believe what you say?" He asked eventually, his tone stubborn. "You give me no more reason to trust you than I would your opposite." He found some mental stability in anger and clutched at that. "Less in fact. For you are a force unseen, even more recluse than my former master."

The long snake like form of the Keeper writhed and in response the silt of the canyon floor trembled. As it moved Raziel could see that the keeper's body was so long that it coiled around itself at least a dozen times, encircling the entire canyon. The movements were sluggish and clumsy. A shudder ran down the spine at times and Raziel wondered if the gigantic creature was suffering from extreme malnutrition and hunger.

"Is that not the best way I should be?" The massive being asked, shaking off the effects of its temporary weakness. Now that his attention was drawn to it Raziel could almost sense the creature's weakness. It was starving.

"Do you not see in him the very worst those of my kind can be?" The Keeper continued. "Acting with no thought for the welfare of other beings, conscious of only his own place in the cosmology of the universe."

The massive head looked up, tilted towards the surface of the water high above and the sky beyond that.

"He sits upon a self crafted throne devouring the souls of countless men, women, child of all races and I slumber here, peacefully in the mud of a lonely ocean. Tell me, which one of us would you be inclined to trust?"

Raziel's reply was quick and heated.

"Neither." He said and his anger flared anew, given vent now to a particular unpleasant topic. He stepped forward, clenching his talons into a fist. "Why should I concern myself with the dark prophecy anymore? Have I not given enough to it?"

The memory flared again and it flung fuel onto the fire of his rage.

"I let myself be consumed by the Reaver!" Suddenly he found that he could not stop himself. All of the frustration, all of the anguish and hurt came rushing out. The negative feelings poured out at the being that claimed responsibility. "I was devoured and I let it happen, all for the sake of the prophecy!"

Strangely it felt better to get it all out, to scream out the rage he had carried inside for so long. As his voice echoed across the canyon he slumped down to the ground feeling like he had emptied himself.

And that emptiness was such an intense relief.

The Keeper remained quiet for along time, letting the silence drag on. All five eyes were staring, unblinking at the blue wraith.

Raziel lifted his head to look back at the creature defiantly, an ant in spite of a mountain. The Keeper's face began to wrinkle again in its peculiar form of a smile.

"What is so funny?" The blue wraith asked in a quiet tone.

"That you speak of the Reaver in third person." Arching, the long neck began to dip down, the movement ponderously slow. As the head drew closer, the ground beneath Raziel's feet began to shake. The mere presence of such a tremendous and power entity, even so diminished, was enough to cause the earth to tremble in response.

"The Reaver of Souls; is that not what you are called Raziel?" The tusk ran along side head as the head moved to be level with him; its nose less than a foot away now.

The Keeper had been huge at a distance; close up it was impossibly large as if mountain were leaning down to get a closer look at him. Raziel stood his ground despite a sudden and very palpable urge to back off.

"The power of the soul is not to be underestimated." The Keeper did not speak audibly. The voice was right in Raziel's own head and the close proximity amplified it into a telepathic shout that was deafening. "It can sustain, transform, destroy, create, nullify."

"That is why it is so nourishing to us, the creatures men would call omniscient."

And then did Raziel seem the Keeper's plight and why he appeared so infrequently fed, he was that quite literally.

When he had recovered from his fall through the Abyss, the Elder had been there to greet him. The creature had told him about the stagnation of the Wheel of Fate, brought on by the souls of the vampires of Kain's era never dying. Raziel had long since dismissed that story as a fabrication in light of the Elder's true nature, but the fact remains that without souls to feed upon the Elder's power had waned.

Apparently the same was true of the Keeper.

"The longer a being lives, the more power its soul can contain." The entity was explaining. "It is a bountiful feast and a terrible weapon. The Elder has gorged himself and now is strong, far stronger than me."

That got the blue wraith's attention and he looked up out of his musings, directly into the house size eye directly above him.

"He prepares for something terrible. His endgame."

Raziel stared up at the eye with his anger and resentment draining away at those words, replaced by a grim sense of foreboding.

"Can you not see what it is?" He asked quietly, in so quiet a voice in fact he barely heard himself.

The Keeper's eye blinked; the sound a slopping wet slap. The eye had no iris or pupil; it was just a deep yellow orb that had its own deep glow.

"No, and that is why I needed to retrieve you from the sword." The creature explained but did not sound that pleased. "You are the countermeasure, but the Scion must still rise again."

The head began to wing away, leaning back from the side of the canyon wall. The valley was only just large enough for the head to move without the tusks scraping the rock.

"You are his partner. The two of you are intertwined so closely you may as well be called one being. Only you can retrieve him and only he can hold back the coming evil."

Raziel stood there for a long time, thinking about what to do. At the core of all of this, he came to realise, was the argument and game played between these two god-like entities and all others were pawns on a chessboard. Even the Hylden were pieces in this cosmic game.

It was a contest that must have been taking place for uncounted numbers of years and the sacrifices it had demanded from Nosgoth, from people who were completely ignorant of it was staggering.

The Elder has his Wheel to ensnare the dead and the Keeper had his game to ensnare the living.

There seemed to be no escape.

"Let Kain find his own way back." He said, disgusted with it all. "He's resourceful enough to manage it." With finality he turned his back as if to walk away. "I have concerns of my own."

Raziel began putting one foot in front of the other, determined now that he would not be distracted from his purpose. He would find Janos Audron and set right the wrongs he had done.

The Keeper watched him go and slowly the mammoth snake raised his colossal head up. It remained silent for a time before it began to shift, churning its body beneath the sand.

"You will go to him." It said, sounding quite confident. Raziel did not look back.

"And what makes you think that?" The blue wraith asked, continuing to talk away.

The Keeper was descending, slowly begin to submerge itself beneath the silt again. Its neck was retracting back, the sand moving to cover its body as it sank.

"Because I know you, Raziel." It said. "In any past life you have led you have been a figure of perceived high moral conduct."

At this Raziel did stop, his figure going rigid.

"Sometimes that code of honour was warped by others but you held it fast all the same. Your own sense of decency and compassion is what will compel you to do as I ask."

Those words stung, even if they had been intended as a compliment of sorts.

.

**_"Hearing myself described so was almost a joke. It was romantically idealistic nonsense. And yet I could not deny that it was an accurate description of how I had always tried to hold myself. That perhaps was the biggest irony of all."_**

.

Raziel looked back, watching the blunt snout and tusks slide underneath the sand and silt.

"Do what you will for the moment. There is time yet." The Keeper added, its voice taking on a tired note as if weary of the conversation.

"But Raziel, as you work your way through your self imposed quest keep one thing in mind."

Now, the only part of it that could be see were the five large eyes that looked up at him from their concealment in the silt. They fixed on him, harsh and glaring as if to convey in a look the importance of its words.

"You have come far already and overcome many obstacles that would have destroyed lesser beings." One by one those five eyes began to close, the silt coming in to cover them. "Do not let all you have accomplished be undone by that which has already come to pass."

With this final advice the last, fifth eye closed and the Keeper was gone, returned to its submerged slumber.

The blue wrath stood still for a long time, watching the bottom of the ravine for any signs of movement or any evidence of the presence of such a monster. There was nothing, the floor of the massive crevice was completely smooth and undisturbed.

For an illogical moment Raziel wondered if what he had seen and heard had indeed been real or if it was possible that he had imagined the whole thing? He had not, after all, woken up in this era entirely rational. Perhaps some slither of madness persisted?

Raziel concluded that he was not that lucky.

"Another fool's quest." He muttered to himself, turning back away from the ravine. Kain's prediction of 'fate promising more twists' was coming to pass in ways that even the Scion of Balance had not expected it seemed.

The question was who was the bigger fool in this quest? Was it Raziel, for contemplating going to Kain's aid, or Kain for needing rescue in the first place?


	17. Isles

Far from sight off of Nosgoth's southern shore was a long archipelago of rocky islands that jutted out of the choppy sea like teeth.

On the largest of these Marduk's ship had come ashore. They had been forced to beach their vessel under constant attacks by a school of Ruhabim out in the open ocean. Now at last, the Hylden had barricaded themselves into a rocky crevice and withstood the attack. Without the advantage of the water to help them the Ruhabim's advance on the Hylden slackened and the bodies began piling up on the gravel beach.

As night began to fall the vampires decided that whatever meal this prey might provide was not worth the effort of securing it. They cut their losses and retreated, falling back into the sea.

The Hylden waited some time before they were sure that the Ruhabim had given up and once they were assured of their victory, they returned to their ship. They buried their own dead and burned whatever bodies of the vampires they found.

A few corpses they left to rot on the beach and as dawn rose the next morning they pushed their ship out into the sea and set forth, heading for a cove on the other side of the island.

Their ship rounded a corner and past out of sight, the beach where they had done battle left quiet once more.

It did not stay that way. About two hours after the Hylden had left, one of the dead Ruhabim vampires they had left twitched. The corpse convulsed, suddenly writhing in fresh animation. It twisted back and forth, undergoing a metamorphosis as it did so. Its skin fell away, replaced by blue muscles and sinew. Claws were replaced by talons and the large crest dropped off along with the lower jaw, a clothe wrapping with the emblem of the Razielim forming over the gap.

Raziel snapped his neck to the side when the change was accomplished, letting his ruined wings unfurl again. He felt stiff using this body. Recently dead corpses were not as good for remoulding as older ones, the muscles cramping up in rigor mortis. He flexed, reworking the new muscles to respond to him.

It had been pure guess work determining which of the islands Marduk would come to and he had had no way of knowing until he got there, but finding so many dead Ruhabim was a good sign.

Raziel was concentrating on the task at hand rather than reflecting on the monumental conversation he had had with the Keeper. He could not afford to get distracted he had to stay on course and rescue Janos. Later, if there WAS a later, would be the time to think about doing something else.

Once his new physical form was quite flexible he looked around, noting the signs of battle everywhere on the beach. The Hylden had driven off the Ruhabim it seemed and then sailed out to sea again. Given how fresh the corpses were they could not have gotten far.

Above, the sky was turning steadily from grey to black and off in the distant was the low echo of thunder. A storm was due to hit very soon.

He did not know precisely what Marduk was setting out here to find but as he looked at the lay of this landmass, Raziel felt some small trace of recognition. He could not quite place it in his mind but this island was somehow familiar.

There was no easy way off of the beach, cliffs loomed high on either side and the sand was a mix of gravel and mud flats.

With no place else to go but up.

The cliff face was full of hand holds and the gift of Zephon's soul allowed him to scale it with ease. It was still a long climb however, the stone cliff rising several hundred feet above the water. Alone on the cliff the winds tore at him with increasing harshness, empowered by the coming storm.

About half way up he disturbed a nest of roosting sea birds, which angrily flocked around him pecking and cawing in alarm. It was only after he'd swatted several of them aside that he was able to progress any further.

Finally he was able to pull himself up over the promontory, a few thin slabs of slate falling away under his feet. In the hard wind his hair and membranous wings bellowed out behind him, flapping back and forth.

The blue wraith stood high enough for the lay of the land to be revealed to him. The far side of the island was shrouded in a thick bank of black clouds that was advancing but he could still make out the island's shape.

Outlined before him, the island finally fit itself into his recall.

.

**_"And now I knew this place. This was the island where the Hylden had operated from during the era of the second Sarafan, the place where the gate between Nosgoth and the other world had been opened. I had been here only once before… but I could not pull the event out of my shattered memories."_**

.

He had been here once before he was certain of that. But when that had been was lost to him, or the reason for the previous visitation.

Slowly Raziel let his gaze wander towards the south. Sure enough, there as he had expected, were the ruins.

The city below him was ancient even by the standards of the ruins scattered throughout Nosgoth. It was so old it even pre-dated the pillars themselves. This Hylden metropolis was a gleaming symbiosis of metal and stone, set in defiance against the encroaching sea. The city was all odd angles and jutting metal spikes, but dark as if devoid of all life.

**_._**

**_"The ancient city, despite its advanced technology, was a decayed ruin now half submerged in the waters of a cove. Everything in this era it seemed was a ruin."_**

**_._**

The technology of the Hylden surpassed anything even remotely dreamt of by even the most learned human society if their structures could withstand the elements in a place such as this.

It had been here that Kain had put down the Hylden general, disguised as the Sarafan Lord, and ended two centuries of Sarafan rule in Nosgoth ushering in his empire. Raziel looked over the city, seeing that part of what could have been a levee or water break submerged by the high tide. Without that protection, the lower levels of the city were badly flooded.

And it was then that he spotted the faint metal glint, sailing into the gulf that the city faced.

**_._**

**_"From this vantage point I could see Marduk's ship. I did not know what his purpose here was but I didn't care." _**

**_._**

The metallic vessel sailed up towards the ruins and was quickly tethered to a stone quay, anchoring it in place. Ropes and lines were cast out to secure the ship to whatever else was possible. Realizing that these were preparations for the oncoming storm, Raziel looked around. The sky was almost completely black now and the boom of thunder was growing even stronger. It wad darkest on the other side of the island and darkening quickly. The storm was minutes away now.

**_._**

**_"I would find the Hylden teacher again and this time I would extract from him the information I needed, even if I had to rip his wings off to get it." _**

**_._**

But first he would have to get off of this ridge. Being out in the open during a storm would not do him any good.

Gripping the edges of his wings, he ran forward and leapt off the precipice gliding down towards the city.

The winds were stronger than he thought however and was he carried back and forth, tossed about by buffeting gales. They carried him away from the gulf however, further into the depths of the sprawling ruins and realising that he could not make any headway against such winds Raziel let them carry him down into the buildings themselves.

When he landed on a stone building overlooking a shattered courtyard it began to rain, a thick sheet of falling water marching across the land. The storm had the instant feel of the kind of weather that might last for days. Marduk was now trapped here. He could not fly or sail away. All Raziel had to do was corner him and it was all over.

Despite himself however Raziel found himself distracted by the city around him. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before. Everything was carved out of stone and forged from metal but not in any haphazard welding. The way they flowed together was the epiphany of poetic artistry.

Woven into this setting were many murals, covering whatever walls were possible. Some were simply elaborate decorative patterns, but others told stories. One imagine, outlined in the flash of lightning from outside, was a Hylden standing proud with head raised towards the sky. In this image Raziel saw how the Hylden might once have looked like, the face unblemished and beautiful. If imprisonment in the demon dimension had robbed them of such beauty then he felt that he could understand their anger.

After all, had not he hated Kain for condemning him to existence as a walking corpse?

The briefest of surveys told Raziel that the old inhabitants of this city had been devoted to the furthering of science. As he progressed the murals showed Hylden studying humans and other creatures, exploring dissected specimens to learn about their anatomy.

Others showed progress in cosmology, the study of the heavenly bodies that circled the sun. Raziel paused by this diagram to study the markings that, if he interpreted them correctly showed Nosgoth to be the third planet from the far larger sun.

One particular mural had Raziel completely stumped as to its meaning. It showed three icons, ones that looked like visual representations of winged vampires, Humans and then Hylden. Above these icons were coloured circles arranged in a pattern of a twisted rope, a double helix that interwove several times. Each pattern was the same but the colours were different. Clear this was significant but as to why Raziel could not say.

If Marduk was the leader of the Hylden house of Knowledge then perhaps he had come here to salvage what he could of this once mighty centre of learning. That was a goal Raziel could respect at least.

Following the long hallway, Raziel found himself in a strange room at the far end. It was rectangular with a rusted metal grill covering a floor that curved as much as the ceiling above. A central metal pillar stood directly in the centre and three claw like appendages lanced out from it, joined in the middle to curve backwards towards the centre.

Off to one side from the device was small set of levers set into a round raised pedestal, perhaps the controls for this machine.

The chamber was dark and had the feeling of having not been used for centuries.

"So then, what do you do?" Raziel asked himself, walking over to the levers. Above them in the pedestal was a panel of some kind made of a glass like substance and blank. He wiped the dust away from it and at his touch, the small screen lit up with green light.

The blue wraith recoiled slightly as it flashed brightly, showing strange alien patterns within the light. But then the illumination quickly died and the panel went blank once more, whatever life remaining in it drained away by the activation.

Raziel tried touching it again but this time there was no response. Feeling curious he reached for a lever.

Before he could pull one however, he froze in place with his hand outstretched. His senses told him that he was not alone and that danger approached.

There was a scratching noise from above and turning to look, Raziel saw them coming.

They were spiders, each one about the size of a dog. They were all chalk white and the large spinnerets behind them were lined with deep ridges. The worst thing where their heads, skull like with two large staring black eyes and long mandibles coming out of an almost human like mouth.

There were perhaps about six of them, scuttling down the machinery and the walls and closing on him.

One of them leapt at him, propelling itself off of the ceiling to drop down on what it thought was prey.

Raziel punched through its body with a single swipe, his talons rending through the small body and ripping it in half.

Another two leapt at him from the side of the machine, one slashing at his leg with its razor sharp front legs and the other leaping up to try to grab him around the waist.

Raziel sent that one flying with a telekinetic bolt that tore off its spinneret. It landed in a squirming heap some distance away.

The spider on his leg bit and clawed but the blue wraith kicked it away before bringing his talons down to grasp its head. With a sudden lurch he tore it off, trailing blood, skin and the remains of a spinal cord.

These spiders he saw, holding the skull, were a mix between vertebrates and invertebrates. They were not just a large species of insect but were mutants.

The remaining three circled him and then came at him all at once, attempting to overcome the blue wraith with sheer force of numbers.

Anticipating this, Raziel leapt up out of their way. He twisted in the air so that his talons came down, spinning and tearing through flesh and exoskeleton. One was torn asunder almost immediately, another was crushed by a fist and its inside began leaking out through the holes in the floor grill.

The final spider, seeing finally that it was completely outclassed, backed off and then tried to scuttle away.

Raziel however was not in the mood to have it return later with more and quickly grasped it in the bind of telekinetic shackles. Once his grip on the squirming bug was secure he swung the creature as hard as he could into the side of the wall. The insect burst on impact, collapsing into a mess of blood, bone and puss.

When the attack routed, Raziel remained perfectly still however; his nose twitching beneath his cowl.

.

**_"The scent was what alerted me to the fact that this was no random attack, that these spiders had been set on me. A very distinct odour of a vampire, but I could not link the smell to any of those I knew belonged to the clans."_**

.

His nose led him to the watcher and turning, he saw it. Or… he imagined he might have seen it. It was a vague outline of a figure but so completely melded with its surroundings that if Raziel hadn't had the gift of a vampires sense of smell or had been specifically looking for it, the being would have been invisible.

When it realised that its cover had been blown, the figure detached itself from the wall and began to back away.

"You're not welcome here." A voice said and Raziel narrowed his eyes at the distinctively feminine tone. "Take your kind with you and be gone!"

With that the figure darted back through the open doorway and was gone. Raziel went after her but by the time he reached the outside corridor the vampire had fled.

.

**_"She was definitely a vampire and appeared almost human far unlike the devolved wretches on the mainland."_**

.

The only way he had of telling she had been there at all was the tell tale smell, a trail of scent that led out through a doorway. She had aroused his curiosity. If she was intend a vampire unaffected by the devolution of the clans then that meant she was not of Kain's direct line.

.

**_"Presented with this mystery, I felt compelled to follow." _**


	18. Chameleon

The only way to tell when his prey was there was the shimmer, that uneven disproportion of light and shadow that did not match the surrounding environment. This form of camouflage Raziel quickly came to respect. It was almost perfect. If you stood still while using it you were as good as invisible.

Whoever this vampire was, she was a skilled in his use. Within this maze of metal and stone it was nearly impossible to track her. Only the faint, tell tale scent of a vampire gave her away.

.

**_"She led me a merry chase, up and through the collapsing labyrinth that was this Hylden city. I did not know if she was aware that I was following her but I had to presume that she knew I was."_**

.

The trail led back and forth through buildings that were falling over collapsing against one another. The ruined state of this place made the metropolis a maze of crevices and hidden paths, all of them twisting this way and that.

This chameleonic vampire used every path she seemingly could find in an attempt to shake Raziel off, doubling back and taking alternative routes over water where her scent was less apparent. Raziel however had a far sharper sense of smell and was still able to track her.

Gradually she was heading north, into the path of the oncoming storm. This was a dangerous time for a hunt but Raziel was determined to get to the bottom of this mystery quickly so Marduk would not have an opportunity to escape.

He supposed he should prioritise and go after the Hylden teacher first but he could leave a potential enemy at his back while doing so.

Outside he could hear the storm growing worse, bolts of lightning crisscrossing the sky and casting brief shafts of intense light through gaps left in the ceiling. The winds were screaming as they tore through the city streets and the temperature dropped dramatically, growing intensely cold.

Raziel, being not entirely corporal, could endure certain extremes so the decline in temperature did not bother him. His quarry however did and slowed her progress, so much so that if he was sharp eyed enough he could catch sight of her flickering movement in a distant passage.

The chambers he chased her through showed more of the Hylden science that had been this cities focus in long lost age. There were dozens of rooms and chambers, all of them devoted to one or another form of study. Some contained glass tubes that still contained a viscous yellow liquid, all around which were machines that seemed able to analysis the contents of these tubes.

Other rooms contained armillary of all shapes and sizes, now all broken and rusted to useless heaps.

One large chamber even had, laid out in perfect detail on the floor, a three dimensional map of Nosgoth. It showed the mountains that ran across the north, the curve of the southern coast and the dotting of islands off the mainland. Far to the east were the flood plains and to the west the jagged cliffs that cut out from the land like knives into the sea. The details were so precise it even showed the rise and fall of valleys, ravines and hills. What little Raziel knew of geography suggested that while this map might have been accurate at the time of its creation, there had been a great many shifts in landscape between now and then.

Raziel took a step into the room and before his heightened senses could warm him of danger, something launched itself out of the darkness. It struck him across the mid section and the blow sent him flying.

Catching his balance in the air, he caught a hold of the model of a mountain and righted himself.

Climbing down out of the shadows of the ceiling was another of the monstrous spiders, but this one was far larger than those set on him before. It dwarfed him, with powerfully armoured legs and a gaping jaw full of rubbing pincers. The massive spinnerets behind it trailed long sticky threads connected to a complex hive of webs far above. Hanging from the web were the bleached white bones of long dead creatures, human and otherwise.

"Kill him! Leave nothing left of this intruder!" The voice of the chameleon yelled and glancing up, Raziel could see that same telltale flicker of darkness on a ledge leading into a tunnel in the side of the wall. Into this she darted, leaving Raziel alone with the spider. Before he could make a move to go after her, the creature scuttled forward to block his way.

"Whatever did Zephon see in these things?" The blue wraith asked himself and then back flipped out of the way as two of the sharp front legs came down. They stabbed into the map on the floor, cracking open a large hole where the clan territory of Dumah was represented.

The massive spider came at him again, rushing forward over and another and jabbing at him with its front legs.

Raziel was swift enough to dodge the attacks, rolling and side stepping the scuttling insect legs.

Then the opening came. The blue wraith dodged through the legs and then jumped up high, raking his talons through the unprotected underside of the spider's belly. There was a gushing of blood and the bug recoiled, letting forth a high pitched squeal. The slash had not hit anything vital but in just a sensitive area it did cause the beast a great deal of pain.

Quickly the spider retreated back up the side of a wall, laying its stomach down against the flat surface to protect it as it turned to face Raziel again. Angrily it reared back its head and then launched it forward, vomiting up from its mouth a disgusting glob of green mucus.

Raziel dodged the attack and watched in surprise as the floor where it landed began to smoke and boil.

Aware now of the danger Raziel darted to the side under a spat hail of acid. The spider's aim was not great, its mucus slathering down the sides of the wall rather than hitting him.

One glob however scored a lucky hit, landing on his left foot. The pain was intense, worse than being scorched by water if he was still a vampire. The substance boiled through skin right down the bone in a matter of moments.

While his body's energy could repair the injury, it degreased the amount of power he had to maintain his physical form.

Quickly he dropped down behind a high rang of mountains on the map, using the brief respite to clean his ankle of the burning sludge and come up with a plan.

Raziel did not want to waste time with this creature while the chameleon was getting away.

Glancing up, he noticed the tall spike of the simulated mountain above him and instantly a plan came into his mind.

He acted quickly then, darting out from cover and running. Half turning he sent a bolt of condensed force into the wall on the left side of the spider's body. The surface cracked and the insect slipped a little, its footing now unstable.

Now that it was loosened, Raziel stopped and reached forth with both hands. The creature was large and Raziel was not as skilled with telekinesis as Kain was but he managed to get a firm hold on the insect.

He tugged, pulling it away from the wall inch by inch. The spider was kicking its front legs out wildly, the back one trying desperately to hold on.

The struggle between them persisted for another few moments, before Raziel gave one final effort and the spider was torn free.

It fell, rolling as it toppled forward and landed directly on top of the spiked mountain range of the map. There was a loud wet crunch and the top of the tallest simulated peak burst through the spiders exposed underside, fragments of exoskeleton and blood flying in all directions.

The spider squealed in pain, all of its legs twisting back and forth. Then the sound stopped and the legs grew still, frozen in the posture of death.

Raziel could see life force leave the body, its essence of soul and despite his distaste for the action, he drew it in. The energy restored that which he had lost in the fight. The souls of people had far more energy than the souls of animals and despite its size, the life force animating this creature was barely sufficient to repair the damage it had done.

"Enough wasting time." He remarked and leaving the spider's corpse behind, he vaulted up to the ledge and in through the tunnel entrance the chameleon had vanished through.

It was full of torn cobwebs that betrayed her passage and hinted at the possibility of more of her tamed spiders hiding in wait.

The tunnel was a natural on, made of the spaces between slabs of rock and intersected only now and then with openings back into the city.

Raziel carried on, trailing the scent and the sign of her passage until it came out through a crack to his left, her scent strong around the opening.

Raziel peered out through the crack and stared at the chamber beyond.

It was a cistern, a large round chamber with water circling in the middle around a central stone pillar. From the low hum of machinery that filled the air it was clear at least that this device at least was still working in the city.

And then Raziel caught sight of those using it.

**_"Humans, living out a feral, debased existence in the ruins. These poor creatures barely had luxury of clothes on their back. I knew from Kain's stories that the Hylden had transported humans here to work as slaves. Even with the Hylden's death they been unable to leave and so were forced to remain here, surviving on whatever came to hand." _**

It was a small settlement, a few shack-like huts on the far side of the cistern and backed up against a tall overhang that settled them from the rain that poured in through a crack in the ceiling. The water hit the rock and then ran down into the cistern below. Raziel could see one or two humans at the edge of the pool, ending down buckets tied on ropes to fetch clean drinking water.

If there were vampires here then the native humans would supply them with all the necessary blood for survival if they were harvested conservatively.

Then Raziel caught sight of the chameleon once again, running across a metallic catwalk that stretched across the cistern. She was easier to spot this time because her method of stealthy did not work so well when she was outlined against the water. Now her outline was clearly visible.

Raziel leapt out of the hole in the cavern wall, jumping at far as he could to land with a loud clank on the catwalk.

Startled, the chameleon turned and looked back at him for a moment; then she broke into a dead run making for a metal pipe that fed into the cistern a trickling thin waterfall.

Raziel bolted after her. He was faster than she was and quickly he closed the distance, but was not swift enough to stop her from getting to the pipe first. When she darted inside, she slapped her hand against some sort of mechanical release and a portcullis style grill slide out of the wall to block his path, slamming into place with an echoing clatter.

Raziel slid to a stop at the barrier and glared at the vampire through the gaps in the grill. Up close he could make out her height and a few other details. She was about his height and lean and her eyes were a bright yellow. Any other details were obscured by the camouflage dark gift she employed.

"This is the last time I will tell you." She said, backing away step by step, her eyes never leaving his. "Leave this place."

Raziel leered at her.

"No." He replied, firmly.

There was a pause, the silence broken only by sound of running water.

"You were warned." The chameleon said then and bolted, running down the pipe and into the shadows. "Follow me again and face the consequences." Her voice trailed off, echoing in the confines of the pipe.

Her behaviour told Raziel something that he found very interesting. It wasn't now just that she was an anomalous vampire in this time but clearly she was protecting something, warding away intruders.

Releasing his grip on his physical form, Raziel let the matter he had gathered slip away. Around him the world morphed with a soft groan, becoming tinted a powerful bluefish green; twisting and distorting.

The Spectral realm was as disturbing and dank as ever but in this realm he had certain advantages. One of which was the use of the gift given to him by the soul of his brother, Melchiah.

Pressing his body against the grill in front of him, Raziel began to shift through it. Matter of reality had less substance here and so he was able to slip through and around it, letting it pass through his body until he was on the other side.

With the planar portals nullified and no corpse to occupy, Raziel was forced to carry on in the Spectral realm as he followed the pipe.

It carried on steadily for a few hundred feet before rising up into open air, climbing out into a drainage pit on the edge of a cliff. Probably part of a system used to keep the city from being flooded from above, years ago. From here he could see back down into the city itself.

Outside, the storm was just a vague suggestion of activity in the spectral realm.

Turning, Raziel tried to see where the chameleon might have gone from here.

It was immediately obvious.

**_"The Castle that appeared on the cliffs overlooking this ruin, emerging out of the fog and rain so unexpectedly that I was monetarily taken aback. The stonework was salvaged, resources taken from the city below to build this fort. Its design was familiar to me somehow."_**

'

On the cliff just beyond the one on which he stood was a looming fortress, completely different in style from the ruins around it. It was far more contemporary with human castles, with parapets and towers rising high above stone battlements.

A gatehouse stood on this side of the gap between the two cliffs, with a stone bridge connecting the two.

As Raziel approached this structure, he saw a large stone bust set above the entrance and the moment he laid eyes on it, he understood.

.

**_"And now I placed where I had seen it, for the statue before me was an obvious clue as to the master of the house." _**

.

The face before him had sharp check bones and a rigid jaw out of which four spikes jutted. The ears on either side of the head were large and angled up like those of a bat. The face was instantly recognisable and unmistakable.

.

**_"Vorador."_**

.

Revived from death at the hands of Moebius due to the alternations in history Raziel and Kain had brought about, Vorador had continued to play a crucial part in the history of Nosgoth.

.

**_"And now I remembered with a sudden start. Vorador, leader of the Cabal the only vampires in Nosgoth not descended from Kain. When Kain had come into power he had banished them to these islands for as long as he saw fit. I myself had taken his Cabal to this rocky outcrop and left them here, centuries ago."_**

.

That was why this island had seemed so familiar to him. It had not just been Kain's stories about his exploits against the Sarafan lord. Raziel glanced up again at bust, studying it and deep in thought.

.

**_"Was Vorador here? Did he still live, lingering here in this castle after his exile?"_**

.

The blue wraith turned to look back and forth between the city and the castle, and then with a sharp nod he turned towards the keep and began to walk across the bridge.

**_._**

**_"Marduk would have to wait. Vorador and I were not friends, in fact we had only ever met twice. But if he was here then I had to find him. He and I have one issue on which we are in full agreement. The wellbeing of Janos Audron."_**


	19. Castle

Gaining entry into the castle was not difficult. Phasing through a grill that stretched across a stone tunnel opening at ground level, Raziel made his way into what could only by some sort of drainage ditch. It was a high cavernous chamber with stone troths in the floor to let the rain water drain out.

Leading up from this dank chamber was a flight of stone stairs. Ascending these Raziel found himself staring at dimly lit catacombs stretching out through the darkness.

Corpses, leaking ethereal gasses, were laid to rest in a multitude. Wooden coffins rested shelves carved into the rock, all of them marked with that odd dragon like seal of Vorador's.

Selecting the nearest corpse, Raziel stepped torward the casket and concentrated; projecting his essence down into the new vessel.

He found this method of re-entering the material realm repugnant in the extreme but until he found a way to gather matter without the aid of planar portals, he would just have to improvise with this.

The body was that of a vampire, dead for a very long time but prepared with great ceremony. It had been wrapped and treated to ensure that it not spoil too badly. As such it was far easier to rework it back to his usual image, twisting up out of the spectral realm and back into the physical.

The transformation having taken place inside a coffin, Raziel pushed his way out scattering the wood and sending it cascading down over the floor.

The vampires laid to rest here numbered perhaps a few hundred and even in death none of them had the smell of the clans. These were the bodies of Cabal.

"Vorador's race…" Raziel muttered to himself, glancing up and down at the rows of coffins. Was this the fate of those who had survived the rule of the Sarafan, to die in isolation on a barren island? Was this all of them? The blue wraith made a quick count and decided it was not. He vaguely remembered the number he had helped transport to this island being much higher than just a hundred.

The catacombs did not hold Raziel long. The only barrier between him and the castle above was a gate that was rusted shut.

He picked at the hinges with a talon to free them sufficiently and then slammed his shoulder into the frame. The gate swung open with a loud crash when it struck the walls.

Beyond was a storage area that in turn opened up into a large banquet hall, the ceiling soaring high overhead. Vacant tables and chairs were laid out in perfect rows leading to the main table at the far end. Banners hung from the walls, well tended despite their age and carrying the dragon symbol of Vorador. The very stone here was like the outside, a mix of different shades and colours that again revealed how this fortress had been built using materials taken from the city below.

Braziers stood out from the walls, each glowing not with a flame but with a small orb of glass that pulsed with a strange luminescence. Raziel had seen lights such as these down in the ruined city, most of them broken.

Raziel footsteps echoed in the silent hall as he moved between the tables, judging the number of seats and coming up with a number of about a thousand.

Above the head table was a very large portrait set into a polished golden frame. It showed a vampire, a female. She was pale skinned and her hair was long and raven black, tied back behind her head in a flowing ponytail. The skin of her cheeks and brow had dark designs drawn in tattoo that complimented the lines of the flawless face.

The painted figure stood in relief against a red and golden sky staring up with a look of fierce determination in her pale violet eyes.

.

**_"This castle had been vacated for years, centuries perhaps. But it was not unattended;, the surfaces swept and polished, candlesticks and portrait frames untarnished. I still had to account for that prowling vampire that had chased me through the ruined city below. I would have to search this keep cautiously." _**

.

Looking away from the portrait, Raziel glanced around wondering why his presence here had gone so un-attended by the chameleon. This castle had to be what she had been protected but here he was inside what could only be the main hall and he could not sense her. It was unlikely that she could evade his notice completely, not with his heightened senses.

It occurred to him then that perhaps it was not the castle itself she was protecting but rather something IN the castle.

With no other recourse left open to him, Raziel began to explore the keep room by room. Some chambers were armouries, the weapons all tended to and swept spotless of rust. Others were smaller dinning rooms and lounges and these were swept and free of dust. Even the fire places he found were devoid of old ashes.

If the chameleon kept this castle clean then her devotion to that duty was nothing short of fanatical.

Suddenly he came to a door that was locked, fastened in place by a large padlock and chain. One does not lock a door unless there is something worth stealing behind it. Raziel was no thief but still this stirred his curiosity.

The chain was easy to break and he pulled it away, letting the padlock land on the carpeted floor with a dull thud.

The door's hinged hadn't been oiled in a long time though and it moved only reluctantly as he pushed it, dragging forward and making a very loud creaking. The light flooded into the chamber from outside as Raziel crept within, looking around and tensing for any sudden danger. Sensing nothing he continued inside.

.

**_"The room I entered was clearly a study of some kind, surfaces full of scrolls and ancient tomes all sealed with locks and buckles."_**

.

Shelves were set in long rows that ran from wall to wall, piling high al the way up to an arched gothic ceiling. This chamber had not had the benefit of any sort of caretaking as dust moved in puffs off the floor with every step. Even the locks and buckles used to keep these tomes locked away from prying eyes were rusty.

.

**_"It was yet more proof of Vorador's presence, for as I knew from Kain, he had stood jealous guard over his stores of old knowledge and secrets."_**

.

This did not bode well however, for why would Vorador seal up his library and abandon it for what must have been a considerable time?

Raziel picked up a book from a shelf and dusted it over. The cover was plain leather and told him nothing. Preying the buckle away he opened the book, gently as he was afraid after so long the pages might be brittle. The parchment crackled at the touch and Raziel had to be very careful with his talons turning the pages.

.

**_"The tome I held was no book from antiquity. It was far more modern yet of greater interest. As I flicked through the first few pages, I realized that recorded here were the day to day details of Vorador's life; ever since Kain had banished him to these islands._**

.

To Raziel's surprise, the writing on the page was not the first entry either. This book told of events taking place on this island at some time in the page five centuries and opening another book further along the shelf, Raziel saw that the diary entries continued.

He felt momentarily stunned as he gazed at the row upon row of books in this room. Was all of this Vorador's journal, dutifully recorded down here? Had Vorador himself written ALL of this?

Quickly he sought out a table and chair and sat, piling the books before him and reading with intense interest.

.

**_"I learned of the fate of the Cabal, the only vampires in Nosgoth not to descend from Kain. They alone had not fall into animalistic mutations, retaining their rational minds. Vorador had guided them over their evolution, helping them come to terms with their growing power."_**

**_._**

He read on, the books piling up on the table before him. The story drew him in and seeing through these writings he had an insight into Vorador's mind that revealed to Raziel something profound.

Vorador, while maintaining a detached and dismissive façade, was in reality a being of great and powerful emotion. He saw all of the Cabal as his children and he nurtured them as any further would, doing everything within his power to ensure that they survived. He had not once used them to further his own gains, never even considered it.

All thought-out his writing was mention of one person in particular, one of his children who he had lost long ago and still missed intensely. Umah.

That name was very familiar and the reference came instantly to mind. The Keeper, that strange god like entity, had mentioned the name Umah to him when they had met on the ocean floor. He had called her 'Umah the Barren'. But what did that mean? With no answer to this question Raziel continued reading the narrative.

**_._**

**_"They had bred the humans they had brought with them like cattle, maintaining a balanced relationship with them in order to preserve their crop. Yet the corruption spread out from the mainland and the humans began to die out." _**

**_._**

Finding the remains of human slaves along with those humans sent with them, the Cabal had found themselves at a numerical disadvantage to the humans. Fearing that the humans might rise up and kill them all, Vorador had proposed a method of cohabitation once used in eons past by the Serioli. Blood would be taken once a mouth from those humans healthy enough to do so to create a stockpile. This surplus of blood would keep the vampires fed and eliminated the need to hunt. In return the vampires protected the humans from encouragement by the clans from the mainland who were becoming increasingly more demonic.

This arrangement allowed both species to exist in a wary sort of peace.

But the human population began to shrink, the land producing less and less food to keep a large group alive.

.

**_"With their source of sustenance dwindling… and there it broke off; the narrative coming to an abrupt stop. There were no further entries." _**

**_._**

Only when he had reached the final page of the book did Raziel realise that he and read through most of the tomes around him, a large pile stacked on the table in front of him. He had been so enthralled by the story that he had gone through book after book without really realising it.

He had only come out from its grasp by the disappointing cessation of words. The last entry, if he was any judge of elapsed time, was somewhere in the past thousand years.

The Cabal could not have all starved to death as he had seen humans on the way here, they still survived.

"Then where are you, Vorador?"

He would not have starved to death on some rock in the middle of the sea. If there had been a way to survive then Vorador would have found it.

Suddenly the blue wraith sat up straight and sniffed. There it was again, that tell tale scent of another vampire. It was the chameleon.

Quickly Raziel darted to the chamber door and stepped out, making no attempt at stealth.

The smell was close and coming closer and now he could pin point its direction. A door in a nearby corridor lead out into another lounge like room, a small chamber with a large chair that sat facing a full fire place and in was in here that the smell was strongest.

Raziel opened that door and stepped inside, moving to the side of the chair.

"I know you're here." He said, turning his head back and forth and if to catch sight of the invisible presence.

"I warned you to stay away." The voice said in reply and Raziel caught sight of movement to his left. Quickly he turned to face his attacker as it became visible long enough to strike out at him with the flash of a sword blade.


	20. Survivor

She was fast, her sword blade sliding across his left arm. Its edge was lined with sharp barbs that cut into his muscle and down to the bone. Raziel swung wide, knocking the weapon aside, his wound leaking vital energy.

.

**_"It was the chameleonic vampire that had hounded me in the city, come finally to face me. From her almost panicked demeanour told me I was right on top of whatever it was she warded."_**

.

Again she lunged at him, drawing her cruelly forged weapon up to cut him across the chest. Her movements were fast but the first time she had caught him by surprise and now he was ready for her attack. He caught the blade at the pommel in one hand, twisting the sword up and away from himself.

The chameleon struggled back, her strength surprisingly almost a match for his own. Fighting as they were, Raziel could see that while she was distracted her form was loosing its invisibility. He could see eyes, hair and a skin of pale brownish colour.

He feinted left with his talons and she moved to block him but he rebounded away and struck her across the chest with a kick.

The sword she carried was knocked from her grip and sent skittering across the floor. Quickly Raziel followed through, spinning around and landing another kick directly into her stomach with as much force as he could bring to bare.

The blow knocked the breath out of her and she was thrown back against a wall, fracturing the stone. On impact the stealth failed, colour and definition flowing back into her body.

With a grunt of pain she dropped down to the floor, coughing hoarsely. Her dark gifts had been honed in the art of stealth but in direct confrontations she appeared to have much to learn.

"Who are you?" Raziel demanded, narrowing his eyes and taking a step forward with talons raises defensively. "You are vampire but not like those of the mainland."

"I should hope not." The chameleon replied still crouched low and breathing hard, bangs of silky black hair hiding her face. She was lean but well muscled, the body tightly fitting inside a skin that seemed almost scaled. It was like a jigsaw puzzle, segmented up into patches that gleamed almost like glass.

Her hands and feet were cloven just like his own, meaning that she had survived long enough to mature into an adult vampire.

Slowly she began to straighten up, a pair of bright grey eyes glaring at him savagely from behind her long black bangs.

As he had noticed before she was brown skinned, almost golden and across her collar bone and up to her shoulders ran two ridges of thorn like spikes where they bunched wide in the shoulders. The same pattern ran across her hips and then down her thighs.

She wore no clothing whatsoever and Raziel supposed that made sense. Clothes would simply hamper her evolved dark gift.

Studying her, without so much as a trace of embarrassment for her nudity, Raziel could see that she was perfectly adapted for survival on this island. Her skin was scaled so that she could change colour and pigmentation to blend into her surroundings.

"They are of Kain's evil siring I would scorn any kinship with those animals." She was continuing to say as she stood up, not even the slightest bit conscious of her nudity in front of a man. Although technically Raziel supposed he was naked himself but the abyss had long since burned away anything to blush over.

"You are not of the clans?" He asked, wanting to confirm that which was obvious. The chameleon snorted derisively, tilted her head to the side and frowning.

"No." She spat the word. "My sire is the mighty Vorador. It is his blood that I proudly carry in my veins." With that she proudly patted her chest over her heart just above her left breast.

Suddenly she paused, her eyes fixed on him. She remained rigid for several seconds, her eyes slowly widening.

"Wait… wait!" She began in sudden recognition. "I know you!" She took a step back, considering him anew her face a mask of indecision.

"You are the fallen one!" She added and Raziel tensed despite himself. "The one the human's speak of so often, the angel of death. The scourge of Kain's abominations!" Her tone told him that this was something that actually pleased her. And of course why should it not, given how her sire had been exiled here simply for not recognising Kain's dominion?

"My name is Raziel." He said flatly. "And yours?"

Upon hearing his name her face went stony again, mouth get rigid in a frown and her eyes tight.

"I am Sally." She replied all the same. "The guardian of the Cabal. I alone stand of the once proud race of our sire's creation."

.

**_"So my suspicions were correct. Here before me was the last of the Cabal, the vampire race sired by Vorador after the fall of the Pillars."_**

.

Raziel took a moment to study her and to see in her the potential that the clans might have risen to, had not Nupraptor's corruption been passed to them by Kain. Vampiric evolution depends, like all other kinds of evolution, on the environment in which the vampire lived. The Ruhabim for example had always had an affinity for coastal regions and so their evolution into aquatic beings made sense.

This 'Sally' has been isolated on this island and so her appearance mirrored the rocky terrain to some degree and she taken on some traits of a lizard; a creature better able survive in places like this. But she had kept her rational mind while the clans had all become little better than animals.

Perhaps, if the were to be someone purified of the corruption, the clans might become like her?

"I know the name Raziel well enough." She said sharply interrupting his trail of thought, raising a talon to point at him. The action was almost accusatory. "You were the eldest of Kain's lieutenants once, where you not?"

Of course he could hardly expect people in this area not to know his name. He had been after all the leader of an entire clan and could only have been made more famous for his execution and then his clan's extermination.

"Then you know of me?" He asked quickly before he could dwell any more on those thoughts. Seeing the potential for vampire evolution just made him most melancholy over the fact that his descendants had not been given the opportunity to show theirs. He suppressed the memory of that injustice quickly before it could take root and fester.

"I know your story. There are few who do not." Sally proclaimed, pacing off to one side seeming to circle him. She caught sight of the flapping membrane that hung from his back and stopped, staring at them for a long moment. She reached forward as if to take told of it but then remembered herself and straightened.

"You dared to evolve wings before your master and for that you and your entire clan were assigned to oblivion." It was more like she was coming up with that conclusion herself by looking at the evidence in front of her then reciting age old rumours.

"There was more to it than that." He said simply in reply.

"Apparently so." Sally stood back and there was pity in her eyes. "You stand before me, more an un-dead thing than any vampire alive."

Raziel looked at her squarely.

"Does Vorador still live?" He asked bluntly, deciding to get right to the point. The pity dropped away from her face and she went perfectly still, staring at him with an air of distrust so palpable he could taste it.

"You do not trust me." He made it a statement of fact.

"Of course I do not." Her tone was full of steel and brought her hand sharply down decisively. "I stay my hand in attacking you only because I realise now that we have a common enemy." And her tone left him with no illusion to how flimsy that consideration might become at a moment's notice. "Yet you still pursued me when I warned you to stay away and now you wish to know something that, if true, I would be bound by honour and duty to conceal!"

Raziel paused to consider his options. He supposed he could simply beat the information he wanted out of her. She was not a match for him one on one. But he needed allies, not enemies.

"Perhaps I may earn your trust by telling you that you…" The blue wraith paused briefly for emphasis. "..and your sire if he still draws breath, are in great danger."

Sally glared at him fiercely in response.

"Explain." She demanded harshly. Raziel did not take offense at the abrupt tone and complied.

"You have seen the beings that came into the ancient city upon that metallic ship?" He asked and she nodded.

"I have." Sally sounded dismissive. "So far they have limited their activities to salvage and as long as they do, I have no quarrel with them."

Raziel leaned forward insistently.

"You soon will, if they discover this castle." He told her and kept his eyes on her to gauge the reaction they might have. "They are beings known as Hylden, an ancient race that have been enemies of the vampires for uncounted millennia." He paused to gesture around him at the fort. "If they find you they will destroy this castle… and any vampires therein."

Sally said nothing and her face remained still, but her eyes betrayed a sudden great anxiety.

"If Vorador lives, then he must be warned of the danger to his person." The blue wraith said, concluding his statement and trying to sound as earnest as possible.

Sally remained quiet and after a short while averted her gaze to one side. Clearly she was thinking through what she had told him. He did not know whether or not she would really believe him all that much but if he could make her at least concerned for her sire then she might grant him an audience with him.

It was possible that she had heard the name 'Hylden' either from Vorador or knew it from exploring the ruins. Raziel was gambling that either one was the case.

"On that, we are in agreement Raziel." The chameleon began after perhaps a few minutes had gone by.

She raised her face and looked at him squarely and he could see that she had come to a decision.

"Yes, Vorador still lives." She told him and Raziel stood up a little straighter in response.

"I wish to talk with him." He said and then paused, seeing her sigh and slowly loose her erect posture.

"You may see him…" She said, walking towards the door and gesturing with a hand for him to follow. "…and you may even talk to him, but I very much doubt he will converse back with you."

.

**_"I did not take her meaning at first. She showed me through the castle, up higher into the empty chambers amongst the towers. Even with only one caretaker these rooms remained well cleaned and swept, a sign of how seriously Sally took her guardianship of Vorador's hall."_**

They had to go up many flights of stairs and when they finally reached the doors to the chamber, they were bolts shut with a complex locking mechanism that took Sally a few moments of manoeuvre in order to open. When it gave way she pushed the large double doors inside and light flooded into a large room devoid of anything but dust and cobwebs.

**_"Now I took her meaning well enough."_**

Directly in the centre of this empty chamber was a large pillar of stone, interconnected with pipes that can from the ceiling to the floor and across the floor to the walls. Set into this pillar was a throne like seat and sitting upon this throne was…

…at first Raziel thought it was another statue.

It certainly looked like it was at first glance but as he peered closer he could see that what he was looking at was not stone, but a thick cocoon woven so tightly around a body that it fitted to the features almost like a second skin.

"Behold…" Sally said and as she looked at the spectacle there was all the world of emotional turmoil in her voice. "Sire of the Cabal and first son of Janos Audron. The ancient vampire, Vorador."


	21. Vorador

Raziel began forward past Sally and he approached the stone throne, his eyes wide and fixed on the strange sight before him.

.

**_"Vorador was a statue, almost literally. He sat upon his alter like throne, encased in a strange substance that coated him completely and left him fixed forever in one place. The expression rooted on his face was one of weary sadness, a deep pain to be quenched by the bliss of eternal slumber."_**

.

The blue wraith stood before him, looking up at the ancient vampire and seeing the substance that coated him. It was tough and shiny, like varnished wood but completely seamless. It coated him completely, even his clothes were outlined by it. Reaching forward Raziel laid a hand on Vorador's shoulder and found him cold and hard to the touch like ice.

"My lord lost something very important to him." Sally said from behind, her voice echoing in the chamber. "He did his best to ensure that we were well provided for but much of his old fire had been quenched by the death of the one he considered his daughter."

Raziel looked back fixing her with a stare.

"Umah?" He asked. Sally looked him in the eyes and then nodded.

"Umah." She repeated and her head hung a little. "She was the last true family left to him and no one could fill that void." There was a long pause, filled with regret and loss. "Not that we didn't try."

Raziel knew how powerful the bound between sire and fledgling was and reasoned how much pain the anguish of their master would cause the Cabal when they could not help him.

It seems strange to see Vorador in this state, so devoid of the cold fire that had suffused him before. Could this frozen body really be the same being who had single handled brought down the mass majority of the Circle of nine and then bested their champion in one on one combat? Could this reduced shell of a man be all that was left of the leader of the Cabal resistance which had withstood two centuries of Sarafan oppression?

The idea was almost laughable.

"If he did not wish to face the world why did he not just kill himself?" Raziel asked, gently scraping at the cocoon with one talon. He did not so much as leave a mark on it.

Sally pursed her lips at this, not taking offense but only seeming to be puzzled.

"He said that he wasn't as weak as the peers of his sire." Her tone gave the impression that she did not understand what her sire had meant by that. Raziel however did and chuckled to himself at the joke.

That fit with Vorador's personality alright, a defiant resentment of the option the ancient vampires had chosen after they had been cursed, committing suicide en-mass because they had believed themselves separated from their god. Vorador, perhaps the most dismissive atheist Raziel had ever known, would have seen this as utterly repugnant and so instead he had chosen to go to sleep to let his troubles and pains fade in dreams.

"What is this substance?" He tabbed Vorador's nose and sound was like striking marble. Sally came up beside him and looked her sire in the face, studying him for a long moment.

"It is similar to the cocoon that is spun during the state of change." She said. "Only hardened to a diamond's strength. It protects his body while he sleeps."

Raziel looked it over again and sure enough she was right. Now that it had been called to its attention this cocoon was indeed very much like protective shell that the body of a vampire spins around itself when it undergoes the advanced evolution that was known as the state of change.

Raziel had never seen one this tight fitting or hard before. Vorador must have gone into a very deep sleep, a torpor that suspended his mind and body so that he could survive inside the shell.

But that would last forever. Eventually he would have to emerge in order to feed and replenish his strength, even if that took centuries.

"Surely there is a means to awaken him." He said looking back at Sally. The Chameleon was looking up at the stone pillar above the throne, following the pipes with her eyes. "He could not have intended to sleep forever."

She shook her head in response.

"He said as much." Gesturing she indicated the pillars and then up and around to the many pipes that ran in and around it.

"He would not give me specifics but he said that the throne upon which he sits could restore him." Then she paused and frowned. "But he said only to do so when there was something worth doing for him."

Raziel took a few steps back, looking over the pipes himself and judging their extent for himself.

"I have something I think worthy enough to get this undivided attention."

The seat itself was ornate and engraved with detail across its arms and back, melding into the stone behind it perfectly to allow the same twisting pattern to carry on.

.

**_"The construction of this stone seat and even the room around it seemed familiar somehow. Somewhere I had seen its like before." _**

**_._**

. Even the pipes seems set in to add to the design, weaving around each other like a twisted rope.

At regular intervals around the base of the pillar were valves set into the stone and beside them parts of the pipes had windows to see inside. The pies ran up the pillar from the floor to weave across the ceiling and then disappear in holes leading up. Outside he could hear the roll of thunder from the storm along with the constant patter of heavy rainfall.

Several of the pipes were also rattling slightly in response and Raziel realized they must lead outside for the heavy rain to send vibrations down them.

It did not take him long to place the style and recognize it. While the throne was constructed of composite material salvaged from the ruins below, the architecture was very similar to that used in the ruins of the ancient vampires. Vorador had obviously tried to mimic it at least as much as he was able.

As such this seems to indicate to Raziel that it was a puzzle, a riddle to solve like the shrines and how they had been set up to test the user's intelligence and ingenuity. This was similar, designed so that only someone of sufficient intellect would be allowed to revive him.

The only question now was how to solve this puzzle? Obviously the pipes were significant somehow.

He circled the pillar twice, looking the complex machinery over and letting his eyes trace the routes the pipes wound as they crisscrossed through the floor and ceiling. Most of them seemed to, eventually; go up while only a few went down through the floor. From what he had seen of the outside of the castle this tower stood directly before a cliff face. These pipes must empty down into drainage trenched used to keep the fort free of flood water.

Water…

Raziel walked back to the front of the pillar and looked over Vorador's throne again and sure enough, three pipes ended into a stone shelf just above. The underside of this shelf was very fine metallic grill directly above Vorador's head.

"What are you doing?" Sally asked as the blue wraith turned to one of the valves set into the pillar and began to turn it. The pipes let out a low hum in response as the air pressure inside changed and the water from outside began to run down one of the pipes seen through the glass window on the one to the left.

Raziel quickly went to another valve and turned it. Again the contraption let out a sound and the pipes all around the room began to rattle loudly.

"The cocoon we wrap around ourselves during evolution is essentially an extension of our skin for a brief period of time." Raziel explained, going from valve to valve in a sequence that he had surmised from how the pipes were arranged. First the one on the left, then the right and finally the one in the center.

"Meaning that it is built from us. It shares all vampiric strengths and weaknesses."

The last valve to be turned locked into place with a satisfying metallic ring and Raziel knew he had gotten it right. He stood back, watching as water from outside poured down the pips, moving in the direction that he had made for it.

"It may be as hard as a diamond, but it still burns at the touch of water."

The water crossed back and forth and around the pillar, being filtered each time it looped the circle until finally it came up to the central pipes and was fed down into the grills. There was a loud puff as a thick cloud of water vapor descended, seeping over Vorador's throne and the vampire himself.

Sally breathed in sharply in alarm and took a step forward to try and protect her sire from what she must instinctively have thought was a scorching.

Raziel blocked her path with one arm and together they watched as slowly but surely the vapor ate through the cocoon. The surface of the barrier boiled and smoked, hissing as the water burned it away. First Vorador's hands became visible, green underneath and slowly the cocoon receded back up his arms. Patches on of his face began to revert back to their usual colour and soon the cocoon was turning to liquid, running off him and onto the floor.

Once it was in full retreat away from the body of the ancient vampire Raziel quickly to the final valve and turned it back shutting off the flow of water.

The water vapor hung in the air a moment long and then dissipated. Before them in the flesh sat Vorador, the first human to be handed the dark gift by Janos Audron and the sire of the cabal. He had not significantly changed his attire since the last time Raziel had seen him, still wearing a red waist coat and white shirt underneath. All of his clothes were patched and stained and where once he had seemed proud

"My sire!" Sally burst out as slowly, Vorador's eyes began to open. The ancient vampire opened his mouth and let out a low groan. He leaned forward on one arm rest, straining muscles that were stiff from discus. He coughed several times, clearing dust out from inside his lungs.

"Awake?" He asked and his voice so hoarse it was barely audible. He ran a hand over his face rubbing at his eyes. "How long have I slept?"

Sally straightened into a formal stance as if she were a soldier speaking to her commanding officer.

"Seven hundred years, my lord." She said. Vorador only nodded once as if he'd been expecting that number.

"And the castle?" He inquired.

"Safe as you asked me to keep it."

Raziel could see that after being roused Vorador was disoriented, taking time to clear his head. He was pale under the short green fur that lined his face and he would need to feed before too long.

"Why have you disturbed my sleep, Sally?" He asked then, looking at her from between his talons. "You know I do not wish to deal with this world anymore."

The chameleon cleared her throat and then stepped aside, gesturing towards their guest.

"My lord… you have a visitor." She said and Vorador's gaze fell on Raziel. There was a long moment of silence between them with eyes locked on one another. Sally, sensing the tension, glanced between them apprehensively.

"Kain lead me to believe you were dead." Vorador said, breaking and silence. With a grunt he hoisted himself to his feet. Despite his recent suspended state of animation he stood tall and sure of himself.

"You remember me then?" Raziel asked with a touch of ironic amusement in his tone as the ancient vampire descended from the throne.

"I remember you well enough." He replied. "And more besides. I know who you are now."

His voice was flinty, cold and lacking even the smallest hint of civility. Raziel narrowed his eyes, quickly re-evaluating his strategy for this conversation.

"Kain told me your name and when I learned of whom I had to thank for my escort to these islands, it all finally made sense." Vorador raised a talon and pointed at him, his face devoid of any emotion. "You are Raziel, fallen from grace within Kain's ridiculous empire yet still his first born son."

Raziel flinched and tried to speak.

"I have come…"

Vorador cut him off with a sharp cutting gesture.

"I care not why you have." He said and suddenly Raziel tensed, leaning back. The atmosphere had gone hostile "I will listen to nothing of what you have to say. I have heard you and Kain out before and always it has been a mistake."

He stood before Raziel, unused muscles rejuvenating in indignation. Both of them poised on the brink of battle, keeping perfectly still waiting for the other to make a move first.

Vorador looked at him sternly and concluded;

"And it cost me the life of my daughter."


	22. Ashes

Raziel kept still, slowly adjusting his posture to be as none threatening as he possibly could. There was nothing to be gained in a violent confrontation with the ancient vampire, regardless of the outcome.

"Daughter?" He asked instead in a disarming way. Vorador regarded him stonily for another few moments and then turned his head to regard the chameleon Sally, who was prudently keeping out of the way of this confrontation.

"Sally, bring me sustenance." He ordered sharply and in response she bowed deeply in respect instantly.

"Yes my sire." She replied and left the chamber, hurrying away past them. Raziel turned back to face Vorador again but the ancient walked past him as well, gesturing with one talon.

"Come." He said, indicating Raziel to follow him. Raziel hesitated a moment, taken aback by the sharp summons but then relented and move to follow he ancient vampire.

Vorador said nothing as they walked and every movement he made showed signs of his weakness after so long a sleep. His posture was not quite so firm, his stance slackened at times and he slumped forward perceptively. He was in desperate need of blood but he carried on regardless, leading him up a flight of winding stone stairs.

At the top was a small corridor that had only one door leading off from it. This Vorador pushed open and stepped inside. Following, Raziel looked upon an elaborate bedroom. There was an unoccupied double bed set with sheets and large pillows against a far wall and a thick glass window facing the storm outside to the left. Rain ran down the outside and occasional flashes of lightning lit up the room.

Set into one side of the wall was a notch above an old, unused fireplace and sitting atop this was a large urn like container. Compared to the rest of the ornate room it was fairly bland.

What drew Raziel's eye was the outfit lying across the bed, neatly folded and pressed. Some tight fitting stockings and a bodysuit, along with an engraved shoulder pad complete with drape. It caught his eye because they were the same clothes he had seen that female vampire in the portrait downstairs wear.

"Kain took her from me." Vorador began speaking and Raziel turned around to see him standing before the urn, looking down at it. "She was the last person I truly thought of as my family."

He bunched his shoulders taking a deep breath and then let it roll out as if the action would allow him to exhale all his pain and woe.

"Umah, the very child he gave the dark gift to. The very one he saved from the homunculi." He half turned and looked at Raziel with a sad smile. "I can only imagine the pain it must have given him, saving her life knowing full well he had already taken it."

Having a few scattered pieces of Kain's memories, along with what the Seer had told him to flesh it out, Raziel could understand what had happened.

Kain had spoken once to his sons of 'Umah', he had simply said that she had had an opportunity to stand by his side as Empress but she had forfeited that right by her treachery.

"During our final battle with the Sarafan Lord here on this very island, I was badly wounded and forced to stay behind." Vorador was saying. "My sire went to aid Kain against our enemy but he never came back. Only Kain returned from the confrontation, carrying his reclaimed blade the Soul Reaver."

So Janos had joined the battle against the Hylden, Raziel pondered? He must have been captured and then pulled into the collapsing gate, entrapped with the Hylden in the demon dimension.

Only now to be released as the Hylden began to reoccupy Nosgoth.

"With no where else to go, I returned to Meridian. Foolishly perhaps, I dared to hope that Kain was wrong and there was something worth saving of my daughter."

He reached out and laid a hand softly, even tenderly, on the urn.

"All I could do when I got there was retrieve the ashes of her corpse from the Sarafan bonfires."

He said it in such a way Raziel knew it was taking him a great deal of effort to force his voice to be neutral.

Vorador's next words however were anything but neutral.

"I would trade anything; my heart, my blood or even my head again if it could see her brought back."

Raziel paused to piece together what he knew of this Umah so that he a clearer picture of the events Vorador was describing which he had never witnessed.

"I had heard Kain speak of Umah before." He said offhandedly. Vorador's face went flat.

"And what did he say?" He inquired.

"That she could have been his queen."

Silence prevailed again, broken only patter of the rain outside and the distant boom of thunder.

During this time of quiet reflection and silent ceasefire, Sally arrived with the sustenance Vorador had ordered. In one hand she held a stylised green bottle and in the other was a golden chalice. She handed the cup to her master who held the cup out to be filled. Blood, ice cold and kept in storage, ran smoothly out into the bottle top and into the chalice.

The ancient vampire drank deeply, downing the contents down. Almost as soon as he had swallowed, some of his normal green colour began to come back into his face. Raziel let him restore some of his vitality before he spoke again.

"I can see you do not wish to even discus it but I will say why I have come anyway." He began sternly. He waited to speak until Vorador was halfway through another refill, not willing to give him any means to protest.

Sally tensed a little, watching her sires face. Vorador continued to drink but the ancient's attention was definitely on Raziel again.

Wanting to get his undivided attention the blue wraith got straight to the point.

"Janos Audron still lives."

Sally's eyes went wide despite herself and her expression was a mix of awe and sudden hope, then she looked at Vorador and that all faded into a fearful apprehension.

Vorador had been finishing another serving and instantly his face went flat, stony and devoid of the barest hint of emotion. Despite how hungry he still must be he let half a cup full of blood remain in the chalice he held as he turned to look at Raziel with cold disdain.

"You must think me blind and senile to use such a transparent attempt to manipulate me." He said and glared past him out the window. "Janos is dead."

He ancient briefly swirled the contents of his cup in his talons before he drank it again.

"Just another one of my family Kain did not bother to save."

By now Vorador pessimistic attitude was getting on Raziel's nerves. He glared back at the ancient defiantly.

"But I do." He said, fully tired of being labelled with all of Kain's misdeeds. "Janos means just as much to me as he does to you."

Vorador did not rise to that, continuing to drink the blood handed to him silently. The whole process began to slowly infuriate Raziel.

"I knew by the mere fact he joined us to fight the Hylden lord that you must have succeeded in reviving him." The ancient mused. "You found the Heart of Darkness?"

When Raziel said nothing, Vorador just nodded as if Raziel had given him the affirmative.

"At least you did that right."

The Vorador that Raziel had know had been a cynical but determined being that could withstand anything Nosgoth had to throw at him. Seeing him now, reduced to someone barely alive in his own mind, was disgusting.

"You were once a powerful leader, Vorador." Raziel began, unable to stop himself now that he had given vent to his frustration. "Kain told us that. He told us of how you led the resistance through two centuries of a brutal Sarafan occupation."

Vorador grimaced a little at the reminder and Raziel pressed on.

"You killed six of the Circle of Nine all by yourself. You singlehandedly brought the original Sarafan crusade to its knees and created a new race of vampires to replace those destroyed by the Time streamer."

The blue wraith shook his head.

"I don't see that leader and grand patriarch before me. I see a defeated ruin of a once proud man." He dismissed Vorador with a weary wave of one hand. "It's pathetic."

His words had some effect as a hint of anger was creeping across Vorador's face, a steady undoing of all the weary resignation that had set itself into him. He opened his mouth to speak and then suddenly there was a crashing noise, a slamming of stone on stone.

.****

**_"Shouts, yells and the unmistakable sound of armed men interrupted Vorador before he could begin to speak. The voices were familiar enough. The Hylden had discovered the castle."_**

.Raziel rushed to the window and there they were, coming up a barely distinguishable cliff path towards the keep. It had to be the entire ships crew and scholars, all armed with whatever they could find to use as a weapon. Their bodyguards and crew were more armed. They were no trained fighting force but their numbers and seeming enthusiasm more than made up for it.

.

**_"They gathered at the edge of the plateau for a march up to the castle gates. Leading them at the front of their horde was Marduk." _**

.

The figure with those large membranous wings were unmistakable as it flew, outlined in the flashes of lightning.

"Deceit!" Vorador barked savagely, turning on Raziel with fangs bared and flinging aside his cup. "You bring an army to my door!"

Raziel swore inventively.

"They are Hylden, Vorador." He told the enraged ancient vampire. "No allies of mine."

This seemed to stop him before his rage could grow any further.

"Hylden?" He repeated I surprise, his ears twitching. "That can not be!"

Raziel stepped away from the window and gestured for him to take his place.

"Take a look for yourself."

Vorador did so, staring down at the advancing horde coming towards him. Having fought with Kain against them all those years ago and having also lived once with the ancient, he would know precisely what Hylden looked like.

"How…" He began, stunned out of his misery. "Even corrupted and crumbling the Pillars should still have…"

"The Pillars had turned to dust." Raziel cut him off and Vorador's eyes bulged in horror. "The binding is gone. There is nothing holding them in the demon dimension anymore."

The blue wraith leaned forward, his tone now insistent.

"Janos lives, taken prisoner by the Hylden… probably during the fight with the Sarafan lord in this very city."

By the anguish reflected in Vorador's eyes it was clear that he wanted to believe Raziel but something was stopping him. He turned his face away, snarling.

"You toy me, creature."

By now Raziel had had enough. He threw up both hands in a timeless gesture of profound frustration and disgust.

"Believe what you wish to believe, Vorador!" The blue wraith proclaimed almost shaking with anger. "I came here hoping for an ally I could use in rescuing Janos. But if all you desire now is to cowardly hide here in this old ruin and sleep your days away then so be it!"

He pushed past roughly past a stunned Sally and stormed from the room, talons twitching.

"I will face the Hylden myself, their entire species one by one if need be!" He called back, his voice echoing even over the sounds of the oncoming attack.

.

**_"I was not thinking clearly, I knew, but Vorador's dismissive attitude had irritated me to the point where caution was thrown to the wind. I would vent my frustration not on him for that would accomplish nothing, but Marduk on the other hand was the perfect surrogate." _**


	23. Marduk

The Hylden who had come to this city to salvage what technology and resources they good for the benefit of the house of knowledge had been forced to take shelter in the ruined city because of the storm. They had been quite content to stay there until the weather permitted them to begin their work.

Scouts had reported a few humans about but it wasn't until they located the castle on the bluff that Marduk became interested. As such he had had one of the humans captured and interrogated. Under questioning the native human told him that the castle was the home of vampires that had been exiled here during the prime of the now crumbled Vampire Empire.

Standing law in the Hylden dominion was that any vampire domain was to be destroyed upon discovery. Bound by the law, Marduk led his scholars and bodyguards to investigate.

He had flown on ahead of them to scout the fortress himself, unwilling to sending those under his care into danger without seeing it first hand.

As he soured over the battlements of the castle, something leapt out at him from a crouched position behind a gargoyle. It grappled his back, tearing with claws at his wing membrane.

Instinctively he dove, barrel rolling in mid air and shaking the attacker off. It leapt free hand handed on the edge of the parapet

"You? Here?" Marduk demanded as the blue wraith turned back to face him with glowing white eyes. The flying Hylden flapped his wings to flow himself and then dropped down onto of the tiled roof of a tower well out of reach. "I left you behind in the middle of the ocean!"

Raziel turned to spread his arms out wide, his ruined wings flapping out behind him in the wind churned up by the storm that still tore around them.

"It was a long swim." He said, beginning to move forward. Marduk glared down at hi, annoyance in his eyes.

"I would have thought those animals that pass for vampires would have finished you off." He remarked coldly, flapping his wings and casting droplets of water off of them.

Raziel began circling him, always keeping the Hylden to his left.

"Quite an amazing adaptation, really." Marduk continued, shuffling around to keep Raziel in his line of sight. "I would never have imagined that evolution could overcome the limitations I gave the species within the curse."

Raziel narrowed his eyes, continuing to slowly circle his enemy.

"Shamash said he gave the vampires the bloodlust." He recalled, remembering the prideful boasting of the Leader of the House of War. Marduk nodded once.

"That he did." He replied offhandedly, as if it did not matter to him in the slightest. Raziel knew now that it was the three leaders of the houses who had combined their efforts to curse the vampires. They were the origin of the dark gift itself.

"What did you give them?" The blue wraith asked.

A slow ironic smile past over Marduk's lips and his wings curved in on himself, resting on his shoulders like a cape. He spread his arms wide, embracing the water that fell upon him.

"Vulnerability to both light and water, so that the winged ones might forever be grounded." He proclaimed loudly to be heard over the boom of thunder. "Both elements that bring nourishment to all other forms of life would bring nothing but death to them."

He said it not in a boastful fashion like Shamash had but in the way of a scientist recanting a past achievement.

"I'm amazed that the evolving forms of the vampires over their lifetime were able to overcome both. Given enough time vampires might outstrip the curse completely." The Hylden paused and then shrugged. "I doubt it but who knows?"

Raziel stopped pacing and remained still, deceptively at ease but ready to pounce.

"Yet you still hold rancour of them?" He asked but Marduk shook his head.

"Hatred is counter productive." The leader of the house of knowledge stated. "All I have for the vampires are an intellectual curiosity at this point."

He looked down at the blue wraith before him and tilted his head to one side, as if considering something before he grinned so wide his mouth was almost spread from ear to ear.

"Why don't I tell you a little secret?" He asked and his voice was mischievous and full of mirth. "A truth that no one wants to admit to, neither Ishtar nor Janos Audron?"

Raziel remained still.

"And what is that?"

Marduk laughed and his wings spread out again, flapping excitedly.

"Humans, Hylden, Vampires… we all came from one place. We're the same, all of us."

The blue wraith tensed at the world, feeling an ominous chill settle through him and he stared up at his enemy, eyes widening.

"What are you saying?"

"The heretical truth, my messiah!" Marduk continued, still chuckling to himself. "All three species evolved from a common ancestor. We are cousin's races, daughters of the same mother. Then we all went our separate ways, forgetting that were all of one blood."

Raziel stared in a growing mix of wonder and terror. If what he said was right then it changed almost everything. All he thought he understood about the ancient conflict that gave rise to the pillar, about who was right and wrong in this struggle, would be completely shattered.

If Marduk was correct, no one was right and no one was wrong. The Hylden and the vampires were not two races but sibling species and that the difference between them was merely biological variations.

"The house of Faith would rather die than admit their kinship with the vampires." Marduk said. "But those of the house of Knowledge, scientists, alchemists, free thinkers all… we know the truth and it sets us free."

His wings flapped out quickly and his muscles tensed. Raziel recognised it as the prelude to an attack and crouched instinctively, talons at the ready.

"After all, if we ARE related to the vampires… what was to stop us evolving our own wings?"

Marduk leapt into the air, flying up high before he dived. Raziel however was ready for him and was not going to let the fight be drawn into the air again. He dived to the side, spinning as he went so that he managed to kick the flying Hylden directly in the stomach. Marduk recoiled in mid air, flapping to gain from distance.

Raziel leapt for him trying to use the opportunity to strike a fatal blow. Marduk recovered more quickly however and swung out of the way.

Retaliating the flying Hylden dived at him with tremendous speed but Raziel had positioned himself behind a set of stone parapets. As Marduk came down at him he misjudged the amount of space he had and collided with the stone with a bone shattering crack.

Raziel leapt forward, grabbing Marduk by the shoulders and sank his talons as deep as he could into the flesh.

Marduk screamed in pain and back winged away, pulling Raziel along with him. The wraith clawed him as much as possible and dropped away, not willing to be lifted aloft.

But Marduk caught him with his flexible feet, a grip just as strong as those with his hands. Raziel struggled to break free but Marduk held on.

"This time I'll drop you into the sea from a lot higher up!" The flying Hylden said, growling in pain from his injured and he began to ascend.

Higher and higher they ascended, moving up through the stormy sky as bolts of lightning flew all around them.

Sudden only bolt of lightning crackled dangerously close and Marduk, in alarm, flew backwards to avoid it.

.

**_"Vorador came, the last person I expected to intervene. He materialised as if from nowhere, sword in hand and ready to fight."_**

**_._**

The ancient vampire moved with such speed and ferocity that his sword was cutting through flesh and bone before Raziel knew what was happening.

Marduk screamed in pain, contorting back and forth and the blue wraith felt himself released. It was only when the severed limb fell past him that he realised that Vorador had sliced through the flying Hylden's leg. Freed from the grip, Raziel feel a couple of feet before he glided to safe landing on the roof of the castle.

Turning he watched as Vorador grappled with Marduk in mid air. Marduk now had a missing foot with his left leg ending in a blood stump. They wrestled with a sword between them, edging closer and closer to Marduk's throat.

Vorador was by far the more physically stronger of the two and desperate to break free the Hylden kicked him with his good leg in the stomach.

Vorador was thrown back where he collided with a thwack against the stonework of a tower. The impact fractured the stone, the cracks running all the way up to a gargoyle like decoration above that tipped forward about an inch.

Raziel had an idea now.

Quickly he ran forward and gestured to get Vorador's attention, pointing with a talon up to the tower above him.

Vorador glanced up and seeing the cracks and looming stone ready to, took his meaning. He nodded at Raziel and with his sword grasped firmly in one hand he moved to get Marduk's attention.

By now the flying Hylden was thoroughly enraged and dived at him, streaming fresh blood from his stump. In the meantime Raziel climbed on top of a set of battlements. Setting his stance he began to gather telekinetic force between his cupped hands.

Vorador and Marduk grappled for a moment and then spinning about, Vorador swung the Hylden against the wall.

At the same moment Raziel unleashed the bolt at the wall itself. The two impacts, hitting the weakened wall at the same time were enough and the gargoyle and half the tower roof came crashing down.

Vorador darted out of the way just in time as perhaps a ton of brick crumbled from the tower, collapsing onto Marduk and crushing his wings. Raziel could hear the bones shattering and skin tearing from there.

**_._**

**_"Without his ability to fly, Marduk was all but powerless."_**

**_._**

He was also pinned, kept fast by the rubble.

Vorador raised his sword and took a step forward.

"No, let me." Raziel told him and moved on past towards the defeated Hylden. Marduk struggled futilely; pale from pain and the amount of blood he had lost.

"Seems I have made the same mistake as Shamash and underestimated you." He said with a voice pilled with pain.

"That you did." Raziel replied

"You're going to kill me aren't you?"

"I am."

Raziel came right up to him, staring down at him. Without his wings and strength in the air Marduk was weak and frail and the necessary act of killing him was made unpleasant by it

"But before you die, answer my question." The blue wraith asked, kneeling down to look him in the face. "Where is Janos Audron?"

Perhaps now the Hylden leader would divulge the information he wanted.

Marduk coughed up a bit of blood that splattered across his bare chest. He wiped it off on the back of his hand and then glanced down over the edge of the castle battlements where the other Hylden were gathered, perhaps waiting for him.

"If I tell you, will you let my students go?" He asked faintly. "I would not have them killed for something I have done."

For the information he required, Raziel was quick to agree.

"You have my word." It depended of course if they would accept this gracious offer once they knew that their leader was dead. Marduk must have realised this too for even beaten and in such pain he appeared grim.

"Under the circumstances then that must be enough." He muttered, leaning back against the stone in resignation.

"Where is Janos Audron?" Raziel asked and Vorador came close, his face hinting that he wanted to know as well.

"Ishtar has him." Marduk said, glancing from one face to the other and back again. "At the capital of the new Hylden nation… the rebuilt city of Avernus."

Avernus… of course. Raziel suddenly felt very dense. Given the significance the Hylden had for the Cathedral had had once stood there, where else would they have him?

"There you will find Ishtar's tower, the Ziggurat, where the once high and mighty tenth guardian is now reduced to a jester for the House of Faith's upper echelon." Marduk concluded and coughed some more.

.

**_"Finally! A straight answer and my destiny set before me. It would be a long journey to Avernus, on the other side of Nosgoth from here but the trip would be well worth it to see Janos delivered from captivity."_**

.

"I thank you for your information." Raziel told him. "And so long as they do not attack, your students will be left alone."

Marduk grunted with a sharp nod.

"Our bargain is complete." He spread his arms wide in submission and surrender. "By all means my soul... is yours. Do with it as you will."

Raziel ended it quickly, driving his talons directly into Marduk's chest and puncturing his heart.

The leader of the house of Knowledge shuddered forward once and then went limp; his eyes unseeing.

As his soul began to let go its moorings on the body, Raziel stood up and drew down his cowl. The soul wavered in midair for only a moment before it was drained down into the gaping maw.

.

**_"Infused with the soul of the evolved Hylden Marduk, I could feel something change within me. My physical form, using the energies absorbed, was changing. I looked back and watched in awe as my wings… changed."_**

.

As Raziel collapsed to the ground, Vorador staggered away from him with a sharp oath. The influx of energy pulsed through him and Raziel had to fight his own body in order to assimilate it. As he did, he could feel parts of him changing.

His ruined wings flapped in mi air once and then began to regain definition; bones reforming with muscle along the outside edge.

They were not restored completely, only reinforced like the structure of a kite.

.

**_"Flight was by no means restored to me, but the flaps of membrane were reinforced and strengthened. Now, I could glide on the air currents and let them carry me faster and further than ever before." _**

.

He stood up, testing his new anatomy, seeing how it responded to his will.

.

**_"Perhaps in time, I might truly fly again… perhaps in time." _**


	24. Tales

The Hylden gathered at the gates of the citadel remained there in force for some time and it was only when Vorador threw to them the head of their leader that their siege came to an end.

Few among them were actually warriors or soldiers. They were for the most part little more than scholars and seeing their leader defeated broke their spirit for a confrontation and they fled back to their ship.

Sally followed them and remained in the city to observe what they might do. This left Raziel and Vorador alone to discuss matters.

Even since Marduk had died and Raziel had devoured his soul, the ancient vampire had been quiet and grim. Raziel could guess why. He had seen the act and even one as well versed in strange arcane arts as Vorador would be disturbed by the method of soul devouring. Even Raziel whose very existence depended on the action found it deplorable.

They sat together in one of the small sitting rooms in the Keep. Vorador himself stacked the unused fireplace with kindling and lit it with a flick of one talon, igniting the wood with an incendiary hex.

When he turned to face the blue wraith there was stern determination in his eyes, a stark contrast to the defeatist stare that had been there before. He seemed on the verge of crossing out of the apathy that had claimed him and back to the fiery norm of his personality.

"If there is to be trust between us…" He began, sitting down in a chair. "Then there should be no secrets… no half truths."

Raziel stiffened a bit but Vorador relentlessly pointed a talon at him.

"Tell me all of it." He said and it was not a request but a demand. Raziel looked at him silently for a long few moments and then he let his posture relax.

.

**_"And so I told him. I told him of my life as one of Kain's dutiful sons, of my fall from grace and my execution. I told him of my resurrection in the depths of the Abyss and my hunt to find and slaughter the very beings I had once called my brothers. I told him of my duels with Kain and of how I had followed him back in time through the ancient Chronoplast device."_**

.

Vorador listened to the story without comment. He remained sitting there attentive and his expression thoughtful.

.

**_"I told him of my journey through Nosgoth, discovering more of my hidden destiny and eventually of my fateful meeting with Janos Audron. I told him of my betrayal by Moebius and my horrible discovery that I bound to be swallowed up by the very blade his sire had given me." _**

.

Once Raziel had begun talking, once the flow of his life had begun to pass his lips he found that he could not stop. One event led onto another and then another and another, the stream of words like a rushing river.

.

**_"I told him of how desperate I was to escape that terrible fate and how the Hylden had manipulated me into striking down Kain and tearing the Heart of Darkness from his chest. I told him of how I had been unable to prevent Janos from behind taken by the Hylden lord. I told him of my decision to allow the Reaver to take me so Kain might finally see and understand his true enemy."_**

**_._**

Time dragged on as the story continued, the fire in the room beginning to dim so much so that by the end, the room was being lit more by the rising run coming in the window.

**.**

**_"Finally I told him of my frenzied awakening in this time and of my quest to find Janos Audron, only made possible by the loss of Kain to some distant place and time."_**

**_._**

Then he was done, the story told. When the last sentence left his lips he felt almost out of breath. He leaned back in the chair in which he sat, trying to collect his shattered thoughts. He felt warmed by the shaft of sunlight coming in through the window. The sun was now well above the horizon and the storm that had so wrecked the coast of this island was moving on further south, a thick haze covering the sky.

**_._**

**_"I had never disclosed myself like that before. I had held nothing back and after it was over, I felt a relief so palpable that it felt as if an unbearable burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I had carried the load of my hellish past by myself for too long."_**

**_._**

Vorador continued watching him, perhaps wondering if there might be more. When Raziel did not speak for several minutes he clasped his hands and rested his chin upon them, his expression distant and far off.

The blue wraith looked at them, tolerating the silence for another minute before he leaned forward.

"I have told you then." He said coaxingly. When Vorador did not immediately reply he took on an irritated tone of voice. "Speak and tell me what you think."

The ancient vampire blinked as if coming back to himself and turned to face him with eyes that reflected amusement.

"What I think is that in another time, another place, you might have been the world's most entertaining minstrel." He said and a smile parted his lips.

Raziel suppressed the profound irritation at being called a minstrel, preferring right now not to offend through any outburst now they seemed to be getting along.

"If you mean can I accept your entire story without any evidence to back up your claims…" Vorador continued and this time he was serious. "Then the answer is no."

He stood up and went over to the window, the sunlight silhouetting his face. Being so old and adapted, sunlight no longer bothered Vorador or any vampire of considerable age. Weakness to light was a frailty of fledglings.

"Some of it I can barely accept as real." He said, his hands folded in the small of his back. Then he chuckled with shoulders shaking. "Although I find the notion of Kain picking a fight with god to be entirely in character for him."

Even Raziel found something to smile about in that sentiment. If anyone in Nosgoth was going to start a brawl with a deity it would undoubtedly be Kain.

"I have survived this long because I am a sceptic." The ancient said and now he sounded disturbed. "I question everything, accept nothing and the mere idea of our ultimate enemy being god…"

Raziel interrupted him sharply.

"I don't know what he is, Vorador." The blue wraith began. "He is like no being I have ever seen before or since. But he is not a god."

The vampire snorted derisively.

"Then I will just have to keep that in mind." He said then he turned, reaching forward to run a hand over his chin and through the fused clumps of fur that made up his beard.

"But if the Serioli, my old order still live… and my old command Ajatar Cadre as well? I must get in contact with them as soon as possible."

Silence prevailed for another minute, then Vorador's ears flicked and his expression became a tad confused.

"I find it strange though that the Seer would seek you out this way." He confessed, sounding genuinely puzzled. "She had never been proactive in any endeavour. Always before has been reclusive and withdrawn." He smiled a little whimsically and waved a hand. "We have much in common that way."

Raziel considered, drawing his talons across the arm rest of his chair.

"Perhaps she was merely waiting for this time in which to act." He mused out load, running over possibilities in his mind. The Seer was an enigma that he was still trying to puzzle out. He had no sense of her motives in this matter at all.

"Perhaps." Vorador agreed with a deep frown. "Her decision to aide you in the rescue of my sire is almost absurd for her however."

Raziel looked up at him, confused at the remark.

"What do you mean?" He asked with a raised eyebrow. Vorador looked back at him, equally surprised to have been asked.

"She didn't tell you?" He asked and when Raziel shook his head he said; "She is Hylden, Raziel. How do you think she escaped banishment when none of her kinsfolk did?"

.

**_"I had not really thought of this question, so fixed I had been on my quest, but when presented with it I found it a surprising enigma."_**

.

The Seer was unmarked; her form perfect while all others of her race had been hideously warped by confinement in the demon dimension. If she had never been there to be so changed, how could she have avoided it? Janos had been quite clear that the Pillars bound the entire Hylden race to that other realm.

Why the exception?

"How then?" The blue wraith asked, unable to think it through himself. Vorador straightened perceptively, standing taller and a look of concentration came into his face as he seemed to shift back through his memories to the time when he had been an early human, living amongst Janos' people eons ago.

"She was a consort of the first Balance guard, Ba'al Zebur." He began slowly. "My sire did not approve in the least of any such closeness with their kind."

As he spoke his voice took of a distinct disapproving tone.

"He had her imprisoned in a place where time means nothing, a fortress secluded from the linear progress of past to future." He shook his head. "A place of eternal torment. The Eternal Prison."

Raziel's eyes shot wide open and he stared at Vorador incredulously, for a few moments unable to take that it.

At first he simply could not absorb such a thing, it clashed violently with the image he had in his mind of Janos.

He had heard of the Eternal prison of course. Kain had spoken of this place during the bragging of his exploits during the era of the Sarafan rule. He had called it a place of perverted torture, where the inmates unfortunate enough to be damned to this place were put through promethean agonies for all eternity.

.

**_"I was left speechless. That Janos, the gentlest and most compassionate soul I had ever known, would condemn another being to such a fate, a being who had committed no crime save for being born a Hylden? The shattering of illusions is never pleasant." _**

.

The blue wraith collapsed back into his chair, a hand going to his head as he tried to reason how Janos could have been so petty.

"She and I know each other quite well." Vorador said, continuing his narrative despite Raziel's obvious distress. "And even so I can not see why she would involve herself in an effort to save the one who sentenced her so harshly."

Then the ancient vampire shook his head again and turned to face Raziel completely.

"But the mere fact that she has is all the proof I need that your claim of my sire's survival is legitimate."

That brought Raziel out of his thoughts. The wraith sat up and looked at vampire expectantly.

Vorador glared back and in his stare there was once more that old fire, the determined personality resurrected to banish the pessimism of his exile. Here finally was the man who had bested the Circle of Nine singlehandedly, the man who evaded Moebius' mob for fifty years and the man who lead the underground resistance movement through two centuries of oppression.

"I will aid you in any way that I can." He declared firmly. "I will see my sire reclaimed and made safe, this time for good."

Raziel forced any questions of Janos' integrity out of his mind. This was the outcome he had hoped for. Finally, an ally to help him in his cause.

"Avernus is a long way from here." He reminded the ancient vampire. "And the land between here and there is not friendly or hospitable."

Vorador snorted dismissively.

"Inconsequential." He said. "To see family again, it is worth the effort."

Raziel stood up from his seat slowly and then offered to Vorador his hand, palm outstretched in offering.

"Then we have an arrangement Vorador." He said.

Vorador looked down at his hand and then back up to his face. Then he smiled and grasped the blue wraith's hand in a firm, business like handshake.

"Let's hope neither of us comes to regret it." He offered with a chuckle. All Raziel could say in reply was;

"Amen to that."


	25. Divus

Had Raziel been travelling on foot, the journey would have taken him weeks. But with the gift of Marduk's soul, the augmenting of his gliding ability, one leap from the battlements of Vorador's castle carried him up out from the rocky island and over the chopping waves.

Soaring like a kite he was lifted up by the strong air currents. His wings caught the force of the wind and carried him on, flying higher and higher so that the curve of the world lay before him.

It was not like actual flying where he could control his direction, the wind carrying him only in the general direction he wished to go. But the sensation of being aloft again, of moving with the air with such speed and grace was invigorating. It almost reduced him to tears had he not been concentrating hard on not plummeting into the ocean.

From the air the extent of Nosgoth's decay was more apparent than ever. The land was almost drab grey and the water a mere darkened shade. If Kain had intended to restore this wasteland to life eventually Raziel did not see how it was even possible.

He did not stop when he reached the coast, the wind coming in off of the sea blowing him along and further inside. Instead of fighting he let it carry him for a good many miles east.

Finally however he realised that the wind was also blowing him too far south and so he loosened his grip on his wings and let his muscles relax. This act allowed him to drop out of the air current and then down into a usually glide, spiralling until he landed in a cloud of dust on the ground.

The landscape was not immediately recognisable and so he had to a bit of scouting in order to give himself some bearings. When he climbed to the top of a hill he found himself looking down into a valley with a flooded bottom. A river ran through a collapsed flood gate to pool around the shattered remains of gothic buildings built of stone.

Raziel had been here before. It was the Drowned Abby, the deluged ruins of a religious community where he had confronted and killed his brother Rahab. It was also a nesting ground for fledgling Rahabim. It was still early in the day however and given their weakness to the faint rays of the sun, even the adult vampires would be staying well concealed.

The city of Avernus, or at least its ruins, lay far to the north east of here.

As he travelled, Raziel's mind began to filter through all the things he had learned on this new journey; Kain's fate, the ancient sleeping Keeper, the cruelty of Janos and the origins of both Vampire and Hylden. It was all so many revelations, so many difficult concepts to understand and assimilate.

Raziel was, if he was forced to admit it, an idealist. He held himself to his own moral code as much as possible. But every step he took on his journey tore down his preconceptions and made him question everything he thought he knew.

What nothing constant? Was nothing ever what it seemed and not some elaborate façade to conceal the truth?

Or was he forever destined to hack his way through the lies that encircled reality, peeling back layer after layer of what was false until, perhaps centuries from now, he would arrive at the real, pure truth?

It was a possibility that he was not particularly fond of.

The sun was setting on the third day of his journey when he finally past through a set of large stone gates bearing the tattered banners of the Razielim.

**_._**

**_"Here again were the ruins of my clan territory; a no mans land of crumbled walls and forgotten glory."_**

.

He had not intentionally been making for this place but the sight of his old clan territory was a welcome break.

His new journey had begun here, awakening to the glee of being free from the curse of the Reaver. Before it came to the end with the planned raid to retrieve Janos Audron, it seemed psychologically fitting to revisit this place, to put the ghosts behind him once and for all.

He walked through the spires and archways, remembering what had once been here. When he had first emerged, awakened after being freed from the Reaver, the afterimage of the past had been superimposed on the present to that he saw what was and what had been at the same time.

Since then his experiences has anchored him back down to reality and the ghosts were shown for what they were, memories of dead. There were no lost souls trapped here in the stone, merely his thoughts of them.

And so he walked through these ruins, passing by the once familiar homes of his clan for the last time. He would not come back here again.

Coming into a courtyard, he discovered several rotting corpses lying on the ground putrefying. A few were still being pecked over by carrion birds, the only creatures to do well in this era.

He recognised them as the Hylden scouts he had killed, tipping the balance of power in their battle with the Serioli vampires. The Serioli had just left them to rot.

There was no sign of them here. Evidentially the Seer had kept her word and showed them some fortress where they could protect themselves from the hostile creatures that wandered the land.

He wondered briefly where that might be. What fortress could possibly offer them protection and sanctuary in this era?

Raziel blinked and then looked off towards the north, the horizon a haze of distant mountains.

Somewhere up in those peeks, Kain had indeed once had a fortress built. A Mountain retreat that looked out over all of Nosgoth far below.

Could that be where they can gone? The fortress, now abandoned with Kain's disappearance, would be ideal for them.

With a shrug he put such matters out of his mind and carried past the feasting carrion birds, focusing on the task ahead.

**_._**

**_"Vorador and his Cabal bodyguard, Sally, would meet me there for our collaborating effort to rescue Janos Audron from the clutches of Ishtar, the leader of the Hylden house of Faith. If it came down to a confrontation with him however, I was far from certain. He still had the Nexus Stone and its deadly power to sap me of my very life."_**

**_._**

He hadn't thought about the stone for a long time, quite purposefully. Death, utter oblivion, was a concept that he did not want to contemplate on for too long. Even the Reaver's curse had not meant extinction.

But he had already promised himself that he would not be unmanned by fear again, that whatever fate had in store for him from this point on he would meet it head on with sturdy feet and an unbent back.

That conviction was put to the test far sooner than he had anticipated.

"We are through, Divus!" The sudden words echoed through the ruins and Raziel stopped abruptly.

The voice was feminine and its peculiar accent left him with no doubt that the speaker was the Seer. She was close; the echoes had not finished dying away before she'd finished her sentence.

"Through?" Another voice replied, this one strangely familiar. "Through? You foolish woman!"

Raziel deduced that the voices were coming from the next courtyard, the one where fledglings used to train under a drill sergeant. He began to make his way towards it, listening to the voices as they grew louder,

"If you turn your back on me, you turn your back on god." The second, male speaker declared in a tone bordering of white hot rage. "Do you forget why you made the deal with us in the first place?"

.

**_"As I approached, a feeling of dread began to fill me and it grew stronger as I drew closer. It was a familiar dread, the same dread I had felt when I had encountered the Reaver in Janos' retreat."_**

.

The beginning of that familiar feeling of impending danger slowed his steps, far more profound this time.

He past by a crack in the wall and stopped there. Through it he could see the Seer, her face firm and cold as she spoke to someone. Raziel could not see who exactly from this angle but whoever it was had blue skin and black raven's wings. Perhaps it was one of the Serioli.

"You delivered us Kain so that your people might survive and have a place in the new world to come." The winged vampire said, disproving that theory instantly. Raziel tensed and crept along as quietly as possible.

"You turn away now and all of that is forfeit!" The speaker finished and with a seeming great effort was able to moderate his voice to a harsh whisper.

The Seer looked at her visitor for a moment with a blank expression and then, quite expectedly she tilted her head back and laughed a derisive and almost hysterical cackle.

"You foolish deluded zealot." She laughed. "Your promises and the promises of your god are worthless and I have always known it to be so." She turned and pointed a mocking finger at the vampire, wagging it back and forth. "I made a deal with you only to further my own plans and now I don't need you."

She was being so provoking that Raziel could not help but think that it was on purpose. She was goading her visitor for some reason but the blue wraith could think why.

He began to edge towards the gate entrance that led into the courtyard.

"No plan, no scheme, no agenda…" The winged vampire said in response, clearly fighting to keep his temper in check. "…will help you or anyone else when the Promised Day arrives."

Raziel paused right by the turn of the corner, leaning out trying to get a better view. He still couldn't see the vampire clearly.

"Make this decision and you and your entire race will not rapture to glory but remain here, to rot with the rest of Nosgoth."

The Seer's laughed died away and she turned grim.

"My kind can do without that glory." She said with profound disapproval. "Unlike you, I know exactly what that ascension actually entails"

Raziel had had enough by now.

.

**_"I waited no longer. I strode out to confront the Seer and her visitor. For the rest of my existence I would wish that I had not."_**

.

Seeing him, the Seer's eyes told him that she was not surprised that he was here at all and not in the least concerned.

The other figure…

Raziel froze as he set eyes on himself.

For who else could it be staring back at him but himself?

"YOU?"

The other him, the one whose face was unblemished and who had sprouting from his back wings of raven black feathers, staggered back recoiling in horror and revulsion. This version of him wore elaborate golden armour down his left arm where a strange triangular device strapped across the wrist.

Raziel's mind went numb so that the painful truth of what he was seeing could not do him any more damage then it already had.

Suddenly it was all clear to him, an epiphany, an opening of his eyes as all the pieces of Kain's fragmented memories came together in one terrifying whole.

Divus… the first incarnation.

"..no…"


	26. Ouroboros

One piece, one memory, connected to another and then another and another and another until finally it all came together in a rush. A broken mirror shattering in reverse, all the millions of fragments connecting to another until the whole was immaculate made again.

Finally Raziel knew what Kain had seen and knew what had happened when the vampire had faced his enemy in the heart of the Chronoplast device. There were homunculi all around him, thousands of them, an endless stream of dolls beyond counting.

He had fended them off by himself, all to give the Serioli a chance of escaping into the future.

But his path had been cut off and so he had been forced to face the puppet master of the homunculi, which to his horror had been Raziel. Not the Raziel he had known, but the original Raziel; the beginner of the ancient war between the Hylden and the vampires and sycophant of the Elder God.

.

**_"And now I knew, the horror of my past, the sins I had committed… did not end or begin with my life as a Sarafan Priest. Kain's memories unlocked within me and I knew what this horrific vision was. Raziel-Divus, my first incarnation."_**

.

The Seer had given them a moment to look at each other and then she had disappeared quickly into a translocation spell, a satisfied smile on her face. Clearly she had been waiting for this meeting and now that she had delayed Divus enough for it to occur, she did not need to keep herself in harms way.

Raziel just stood there staring at the truth, unable to move. His body could not have obeyed even had his mind been in any condition to offer it any commands. His eyes gazed forward, fixed on the face of his past in disbelief and utter horror. It had been bad enough learning his human life had been spent as a Sarafan butcher but this was far worse. It laid responsibly for the world's oldest and most destructive conflict directly at his doorstep.

Raziel-Divus seemed just as dismayed, his blue skin having gone so pale he was almost white. He had backed up almost to the wall, shaking his head and trembling.

"No…no…no." He was saying, his voice now recognizable as that of Raziel's own. The winged incarnation took several deep breaths in through his noise as if desperately trying not to give in to panic.

"No No No No No No No No!" He kept repeating over and over. Raziel watched the expression on his face turn from horror to deep burning anger.

"You must not live!" He spat, only just able to form words. "You can NOT live! Every moment you exist is another I have to spend trapped in that…" He paused to swallow hard, his Adams apple bobbing visibly. "…that disgusting body!"

Raziel did not reply; he was still too overcome by what he was seeing to move. So he just stood there gawking at this raven winged version of himself.

He knew he must move, he must do something, but what? What could he do to correct this horrible fact?

Uncounted millions of people had died on both sides during the ancient war, a whole thousand years of bloodshed. The after affects, the imprisonment of the Hylden, the cursing of the vampires, the human uprising and vampire genocide; it had all been his fault.

And so this was why, despite having thoroughly rejected him, the Elder always referred to his greatest servant.

Who else but his greatest servant would put events in motion that would result in so much death and enough souls to feed the Wheel of Fate?

"No... no the Reaver will not claim me this way!" Hearing mention of the sword, Raziel found that word like a key that unbound the chains of terror that held him in stasis.

He shook himself over and faced his past self again, eyes narrowing.

"Moebius can have it, can use it to start off this pitiful little genocide." Divus spat and slapped his wings, launching himself up off the ground. He hovered for a moment before he dropped down onto a broken stone pillar nearby, his talons holding him steady. "Just as long can I find release from its curse!"

The winged vampire held both hands out in front of himself and arched his talons. As he did so a spark of energy began to pulse between each of them, jolts of energy passing between one and the other.

"Homunculi, arise!" He declared loudly and then clapped his hands together. The culminated energy shot out from him, pulsing off in all direction like a shockwave. As it past, the dust which had settled over the ruins stirred as if caught in a breeze.

The dust rose high into the air, a thick cloud of brown and grey that soon began to spin, churning around until it seemed as if dozens of small tornados were spinning them in place.

Raziel watched as the dust came together in the harsh winds that forged them and began to solidly. Out of the haze of specs came figures of men, terracotta warriors armoured in archaic and ancient styled armour. Some held swords, others held spears and a few had shields as large as their whole bodies, engraved with the circular symbol of the Wheel of Fate. All of them pulsed with a sickly yellow glow as they began forward in perfect unison.

They moved quickly and efficiently to surround the blue wraith in a tight circle; spears and swords held forward and the shields lined up like a wall.

Encircled, Raziel stood there with his face lowered to the ground and did not move, silence falling over the ruins with the occasional clattered of metal of metal as the homunculi stood against one another.

Suddenly, the blue wraith swung his head up and roared with laughter. He laughed loudly and hysterically, roaring with a cackle that gave hint of madness. He spread his arms out wide and continued laughing, heedless of enemies that surrounded him.

"My first incarnation?" He asked finally after he seemed able to catch his breath, his chest heaving from the effort and making him shake. "You!" He raised a talon to point at Divus, the action feeble because he was still laughing.

Raziel-Divus flushed with mortification, flaring his nostrils and baring his teeth in a snarl.

"You're a coward, an insecure yellow bellied coward!" The blue wraith continued derisively, laying both hands on his chest. "You're right, this form I am forced to endure is horrendous and loathsome." There he paused and took a very deep breath, letting it out in a long sigh.

"But when I see you and know that you are who I once was, I think it an improvement!"

It was the only rationale that allowed him to keep his sanity, the only thing he could grasp on to keep his sense of identity from being completely destroyed. Now that he had that grip he was not going to let it go.

Yes he might well have caused so much misery but it had been another lifetime ago and he was not the same person anymore. He was a better person.

"Improvement?" Divus scoffed, spitting out the word in contempt. "I am the king of Fanum-Divus, scribe of God and ward of heaven!" This he proclaimed with his arms raised high. "You are barely even alive, a misshapen ghoul. How is that an improvement?" Snarling, he made a cutting gesture with one hand.

"Without the Reaver blade to back you up, YOU are nothing!"

With a jab of one talon he motioned his agents to the attack. They obeyed with speaking, stony faced and emotionless.

Three holding spears charged Raziel from behind but he was far too quick and flexible, sliding out of the way and slicing his talons across the legs of his attackers. He cleaved them across the shins, breaking through their mud and clay skin. Just as Kain's memories showed him, they were almost entirely on the inside with only a vicious stinking liquid that poured out from the holes he had carved into them.

More with swords attacked from either side. He sprang up out of the water, pirouetting in mid air to smash a foot into each face. The impact shattered the terracotta faces and drove them to the ground in fragments of broken pottery.

Snarling in anger, Divus leapt off of his stone pillar and flew at Raziel bare fisted, sparks of raw energy gathered between his talons. Having had some experience fighting off a flying opponent with Marduk, Raziel rolled out of the way just in time. As Divus flew over, the ground his shadow touched exploded in a cascading succession of detonating blue fires. Several of his own homunculi were caught in these explosions and reduced to ash on the spot.

Skidding to a stop Raziel just avoided running into a homunculi, protected behind its large elaborately decorated shield. It lashed out at him with a short sword. Raziel slid past the lunge, getting inside the defence of the homunculus faster than it could defend and punching a hole straight through its chest.

As the puppet collapsed, Raziel grabbed its shield and quickly turned to face his new attacker, Divus coming back again. The flying vampire collided with the shield and Raziel tensed, trying to hold his ground but being driven back further and further.

Finally Raziel spun up and kicked the shield up and into his past self with a loud smack.

Raziel was quick to realise that he had the advantage. The Seer had goaded Divus with her obtuseness thus leaving him unbalanced enough so that when the two Raziel's had come face to face Divus had not been thinking clearly.

Trying to capitalise on this weakness Raziel attacked, lashing at Divus' face with his talons. Divus however proved that his reflexes were just as quick was Raziel's and brought his right arm up to shield himself. The device on his wrist gave off a responding metallic click noise and it elongated, spreading out with blade like protrusions from its bird like ornamentation. Between these blades a shield of blue energy sparked in a perfect circle.

The moment Raziel's talons came in contact with it, he was thrown back by a blast of force that hit him fully in the arm He was sent tumbled through the air, clutching his limb to his chest. Had the force been any greater his arm might well have been ripped clean off.

He righted himself in mid air and skidded to a stop on the ground, feeling his reverses of energy decrease from the injury he sustained.

Kain's memories warned him, too late, to watch for that shield. It had withstood the blows of the Reaver blade so it could easily take anything his talons could do to it.

Sensing danger he rolled forward, just avoiding the attack as two homunculi attacked him with swords from behind.

One charged after him, swinging his sword in an arch at his chest. Raziel grabbed its wrist and then brought the elbow of his free arm down on the arm. The limb broke at the blow and the homunculus staggered back and unable to protect itself, Raziel was free to slice its head off with its own weapon.

Divus flapped his wings savagely and flew at him again. Raziel was expecting it now and leapt up onto the shoulders of the second homunculus, much to its alarm. Using the terracotta puppet as a spring board, Raziel vaulted up and out of the way, spinning in mid air. Divus ploughed through the homunculus a moment later, shattering it with a burst of a blue fire.

Suddenly the flying vampire spun around and threw his hand forward, unleashing a bolt of condensed energy directly at Raziel. The blue wraith, still in mid air could not avoid the strike and the impact of the blast threw him backwards until he slammed into a wall sending brick dust flying.

Divus darted in, a hand with an iron grip pinning itself around Raziel' throat. The blue wraith struggled to free himself, clawing with his talons at the armoured limb at held him but all he did was scrap the armour.

"Die! Die, damn you!" Raziel-Divus snarled, lips pulled back in an expression of intense anguish. His grip tightened, harder and harder. "Die and set me free!"

In response to his words there was a bright flash of white light, a shaft of illuminating bursting forward spontaneously from Raziel's chest. It hit Divus in the face and stung his eyes. Crying out in pain, he dropped the blue wraith and staggered back.

Scrambling back to his feet, Raziel looked up and paused staring in awe. The light coming from his chest had a face he recognised.

Ariel, spirit of the previous balance guardian had emerged from his own body to strike back at Divus and hold him away. She was splendid to behold, wrapped in her own energies of spirit that burned with white fire as she hit Divus with as hard as she could. Her face was whole again this time and set in a stern and determined expression, lips pulled down into a savage snarl.

Had she been inside him all this time, not some loose spirit haunting his path but within his own soul as he had been within Kain's?

"Raziel!" She called to him and hearing her speak his name so earnestly brought the blue wraith back to the present.

Divus was trying to shield his eyes from the light lancing into his face and he was not protecting himself otherwise.

Acting instantly Raziel sprung, his talons cutting into Divus' undefended chest. The winged vampire screamed in pain and fell backwards, trying to beat off his attacker but Ariel kept the light on him and unable to respond.

Raziel slashed repeatedly at Divus' chest, cleaving him deep and sending blood flying into the air with each strike of his talons. Finally unable to take it anymore, Divus swung at him with his armoured arm.

Raziel grabbed his wrist as it came around and twisted sharply, breaking the wrist in a sharp shattering of bones and ligaments.

Divus screamed and stumbled back, clutching his arm to his bloodied chest. Raziel finished the fight with a sharp kick to the chest, knocking him down to the ground with a dull thud.

Sneering in disgust, the blue wraith knelt beside the injured ancient.

"Look closely at me." He began insidiously, reaching up with one hand and taking a hold of the top of his clan drape. Divus watched through narrowed pain filled eyes that began to widen in new stark terror as the blue wraith drew his drape down, exposing to him the missing jaw and the dark crevice that descended down into the chest cavity.

"Do you see this?" Raziel asked, leaning forward to make sure he got a good look almost right down into his chest "Do you fear it? Do you despise this maiming?"

They were face to face down and Raziel observed the handsome face he had once enjoyed and realised that for once, he didn't miss it.

"Look at this, remember it and know that it's in your future. Remember that fate will drag you down to this no matter much you pander your god."

Howling in a culmination of horror and fear, Divus lashed out at him with his uninjured hand. The gesture forced Raziel back away from the winged vampire with a bolt of force and by the time the wraith had regained his feet, Divus had leapt into the glowing midst of translocation and had vanished with a shimmer of blue light.

.

**_"And so he vanished, retreating from that which he dare not face. With this new facet of my past confirmed I felt neither the terror nor self loathing that the truth of the Sarafan inquisitor had inspired in me. This version of me was just a coward hiding behind his dolls and he filled me with nothing but disgust." _**

.

With the battle over, Raziel felt the fatigue catch up with him and he collapsed back to a sitting position. Unbidden his head fell into his hands and the despair he had forced away from behind for the battle game back.

.

**_"I remembered the words of the Keeper, 'Do not let all I have accomplished be undone by that which has already come to pass'. Now I understood what he had meant and he had been so right. I had let my past dominate me before but I would not let it do so again.."_**

.

A deep breath was all that was needed to restore his courage and he raised his head to see Ariel looking at him. Her spirit was still there, looking into his face with understanding eyes. She was growing fainter but her smile was still visible, a smile that said louder than words that she was proud of him for his unwillingness to succumb to fear. Silently she pointed, gesturing off towards the east and then vanished completely.

Raziel sat there a few moments staring off into space and then he got to his feet, dusted himself off and turned to look off in the direction that she had pointed.

.

**_"My future was what was of consequence and that future lay east, to the city of Avernus, the Ziggurat and Janos Audron. And once that was done, perhaps more…_**


	27. Ziggurat

The Hylden Nation, that had been the term Marduk had used when he had spoken of the kingdom their people were trying to create in the east of Nosgoth. Until now Raziel had not quite understood what he had meant by that. Now he stood looking at a land where green lights twinkled from distant glowing settlements on the misty horizon.

The eastern half of Nosgoth were a low flat plane that was prone to flooding in bad winters and before the fall of the pillars and the corruption of the land it had been some of the most fertile farming land in the world.

Avernus lay before him, utterly changed from the human settlement of wood and stone had seen before. Rebuilt with Hylden science it was a sprawling metropolis far enlarged than the humans had built it. The buildings were all stone and metal, just like those he had seen in the ruins on the isles but in far better shape having been constructed recently, all unusual angles and shapes designed not to please the eye but to be efficient in their tasks. Spotlights, tinted green, lanced up from the circling streets to pierce the night sky.

.

**_"Avernus in the time I had seen it last was a simple human settlement, albeit on fire. Now, rebuilt entirely with Hylden design and science, it was a parody of its former self."_**

.

Where the city itself had once been was visible surrounded by the rest of the growing city, a suggestion of more recognisable shapes directly in the centre. In the very heart of the metropolis, lancing higher than any of the buildings around it; was the Ziggurat.

.

**_"Rising high above the rebuilt Cathedral was a twisting spire of pipes and metal. This had to be the Tower of Ishtar, the Ziggurat, where Janos was being held."_**

**_._**

It was a spike like tower, built out of the ruins of the cathedral itself, a spike that jutted high and was trailing clouds from its tip. It seemed, at least from this distance, to be composed entirely of pipes that wound and interwove up a central pillar of stone all the way to the top. The construction and pattern reminded Raziel of bunched muscle underneath skin, culminating in a top that widened out like the end of a trumpet. Lights blinked from that wide rim and all down its sides, spots for windows to let out inner light perhaps.

Since all Hylden buildings, no mater the size, were shaped to entirely benefit their function it had to be significant but its purpose eluded him at first glance. Strangely though the building seemed somehow familiar. He could not immediately place where but he had definitely seen a building like it somewhere before.

The entire structure brooded with a sense of great impatience, as if it was waiting for something to happen soon that it had been waiting a long time for already. It seemed poised on the brink, just waiting for the word to begin its task.

This was the home of Ishtar, the leader of the Hylden house of faith, the one who had the Nexus Stone; the only artefact Raziel knew of which had the power to kill him.

The Ziggurat was taller than he had imaged it could be and if Janos was indeed being held prisoner it would take a great time in deed to search the entire structure room by room.

Marduk has said he was being used like a jester, something for the Hylden to amuse themselves with. Jesters were always used in a central chamber or hall where as many people could see them as possible. It was a rough guess but that might be where they would hold him.

Far in the distance, to the four points of the compass, there were smaller Hylden settlements pushing the frontier of their fledgling society out. This was the new Hylden colony, land they had claimed and were continuing to annex as they expanded their domain. Raziel's own experience in politics and land acquisition from when he had ruled his clan told him that if they were not at least slowed, without any organised army to stop them, they would take control of all of Nosgoth within a year.

Raziel stiffened, taking several deep preparatory breaths to calm himself and clear his mind.

.

**_"My encounter with my first incarnation made me re-think my purpose. I was rescuing Janos because it was I who had placed him in such terrible danger and misery to begin with. But the consequences for my sins went much further than him. Divus had shown me that much." _**

.

Everything was clear to him now, the nature of his existence as the wraith and what it truly meant. It was not to right any wrong others had done, nor to strike down those who caused injustice to happen.

.

**_"I would right all I wrong I and any of my past selves had committed. I would right the scales of my existence and I would start here." _**

.

Briefly he paused to push his awareness out towards the city below. As he had expected he could feel the presence of a great many souls, thousands of Hylden, the majority of their entire race perhaps. Fighting through so many was out of the question.

.

**_"I did not sense Vorador or Sally nearby. Perhaps they were already inside."_**

.

Vorador had said he could aid him and promised support for rescuing Janos and Raziel believed he could take the ancient vampire at his word. Together, he and his ward, Sally, possessed great skills of stealth and might easily be able to infiltrate a metropolis such as this without being detected.

Given that Vorador could do translocation and Raziel could not, it was also safe to assume that if he was coming he would have gotten ahead of him easily.

Suddenly there was a loud air splitting shriek, a piercing alarm, and the spotlights illuminating the city began to turn back and forth wildly. In their light Raziel could see that flying over the city, soaring back and forth in menacing formation were winged creatures of some kind. Raziel could only make out the considerable wing span from this distance.

The city below began to buzz with activity, shuts and yells and screamed orders filled the air as the Hylden scrambled to the defence of their settlement.

Some of the flying creatures dropped down low to the city, diving in formation and dropping objects onto the battlements as they flew. Whatever these things were burst open with explosive force on impact, throwing stonework and Hylden soldiers out in all directions. Fires began to burn whenever these explosive devices hit anything flammable, orange light clashing with the green of the spotlights in the chaos.

In the brighter light, Raziel could see that the winged beings attacking the Hylden city were man sized with blue skin and had raven black wings on which they flew.

The Serioli, it could be no others.

"So strange one, we meet again." A feminine voice declared directly from above. Starting, Raziel glanced up to see another of the ancient vampires dropping down out of the sky. She landed before him and straightened up, her black wings curving to fit behind her body.

It was Ajatar Cabre, the grandmaster of their order. She still wore the ancient style armour but since their last meeting it had been frayed and pitted. Deep scratch marks, probably made by claws, ran down her spin pads and arm bracers. Clearly their search for a new fortress had not been entirely without conflict.

At both sides of her hips were her preferred weapons, the two short bladed swords slide into sheaths.

"Vorador told me to expect you." She said, sliding a hand back to brush her raven black hair out of her eyes. There was a wide, almost foolishly excited grin on her face and her eyes were alive with intensity.

"Then he contacted the Serioli?" Raziel asked, not overly surprised at her presence. In fact it made perfect sense. He knew from what he could piece together of Kain's memories that Vorador had once been of the Serioli. Now that he knew they still lived he could recruit them to their cause.

The grandmaster nodded an affirmative.

"It took him thousands of years to do so but he did." She said it without the least hint of rancour.

Instead she gestured with a talon down at the city where her vampires were performing their diving formations again and now that he had been observing for a few minutes Raziel could see it was not to cause damage but to spread confusion.

"We will provide you and Vorador with the distraction you require to ascend the Ziggurat." She added and went on briefly to explain at Vorador was indeed already in the city, having given them the signal to begin their attack.

The Hylden however would not allow the vampires to continue his assault unopposed for long.

"The Hylden are heavily entrenched here." Raziel warned her sharply. Eventually the vampires would be overwhelmed by the Hylden's superior numbers or their advanced technology.

Once the defenders were able to organise themselves, this raid would easily be dealt with.

"I do not intend to attack them outright." Ajatar said with a shake of her head but no diminishing of her excited manner. "That could be suicide." She made a cutting gesture with her hands, indicating that she did not care to entertain that notion. Raziel would have smiled had he the bottom jaw to do so. An ancient vampire without a tendency to self destruction?

"No, we will simply get their attention and keep it for as long as we can." Ajatar glanced quickly at the city to see how the attack was going. "It will not give you a very large window of opportunity however. You will have to be quick."

She moved to the edge of a rocky precipice, spreading her wings out again in preparation to take flight.

"Do not risk the lives of your soldiers on my account." Raziel told her quickly. Even if it might help him he did not want to risk the lives of others for his own personal quest for redemption.

Ajatar stiffened as if he had struck her and whirled about, eyes flashing dangerously. Her face was fixed in a deep frown and her expression was one of indication.

"We are Serioli, the last guardians of the faith of the elements." She said; her voice filled with pride and defiance. "We are the heretic army! Merely existing we risk our lives."

She turned back with a flourish and spread her wings, flapping them several times to gain lift.

"Go to the aid of Janos, strange one. We will do what we must." With that she rose into the air with a spray of dust flying out beneath her and soared on, flying towards the city and the aid of her vampires. A battle cry left her hips, echoing on the night air.

"For Lord Kain!"

Her Serioli vampires took up the call and charged anew, spreading more confusion and chaos amongst the besieged Hylden.

Raziel frowned at their throwing themselves into danger on his behalf but decided if they were determined to do it anyway not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

With a leap he took himself into the air as well, grabbing his wings in both hands and reinforcing their strength with his new muscle and bone to augment his gliding. With the Hylden distracted fending off the attack by the Serioli, none of them noticed him gliding in towards the Ziggurat on silent wings.

He kept up high, riding the air currents and dodging around the spotlights to ensure that he was not spotted.

The Ziggurat loomed up higher and higher as he came towards it and as it neared, it became more and more familiar in Raziel's mind. The similarity to something he had seen before nagged at him incessantly, even as he came right up to the stone and clutched onto it with his talons.

Once he was assured that he had a good grip, he glanced around to make sure that his arrival had not been detected. No sign of any pursuit. Ajatar's distraction was working.

It was a long way down to the ground below and he was nowhere near the top of this impossibly high tower. Grimly he set his muscles and began to climb; sinking his talons into the stone as yard by yard he began to ascend.

Slowly, as he had to climb over the pipes that wove about the tower, the sense of knowing grew until it tipped over the edge of a vague feeling of familiarity to sudden and decisive recognition.

.

**_"With sudden and terrible certainty I knew this construction work. Ishtar had not randomly chosen to build his tower thus."_**

.

He stopped dead, clutching to the Ziggurat's side, sharply looking up and down to see the towers confirmation close up. It confirmed all his worst fears instantly. Of course he had seen this type of building before!

He had had to traverse a tower just like this in order to reach his deformed brother Zephon.

**_._**

**_"He had elaborated on the design and greatly improved it, but this was without a doubt a remake of the human's once great weapon against Kain's legions, the cathedral which could blast forth noise that destroyed armies." _**


	28. Torment

Now Ishtar's intentions were made all too clear. The human's cathedral styled weapon had had a limited range, making it practical only for the defence of a certain key area. The Ziggurat was by far taller and built to deliver blasts of sound to everything within its sight, which given its height was most of the mainland of Nosgoth. If used this spire had the potential to destroy most of the clan vampires, and many other species besides.

Obtaining entry into the spire was not difficult. The structure was covered in ventilation holes whose only construction was a flimsy metal grill. One kick was all that was required to dislodge one, letting Raziel slip inside.

Almost immediately upon entering the blue wraith felt, in both the ground beneath and in the air around him, a vibration. His ears more sensitive than any humans knew it was a sound wave immediately.

The Ziggurat was compartmentalised, made up of dozens of floors each one a labyrinth that curved around a central pillar. That same organic styled architecture of metal and stone made stepping within the spire a nightmare to navigate. What surprised him though was that the rooms he past through seemed to be completely deserted. He had not sighted any Hylden since he had stepped inside.

Vorador was not hard to find. He seemed to be waiting for him, standing to one side beside a large bolted door leading into the Ziggurat's interior. Sally was with him, invisible in their chameleonic stealth, just visible in relief against the stone around her.

Vorador's clothes were blood stained in a few places and the sword by his side was dripping onto the floor. Evidentially their passage inside had been more fought with danger than his own.

"Raziel." The ancient vampire said with a nod of recognition as the blue wraith came towards them.

"He is close Vorador. I know it." He replied, too anxious with being so close to his goal to waste time with small talk. "Can you sense him?"

Vorador's expression became pensive.

"Yes I can." He said but when Raziel looked at him expectantly hoping for more, he shook his head. "But I can not Whisper to him. I have been trying but his mind is too frayed, too jumbled for him to understand me."

Raziel felt his heart begin to sink.

Before he could stop the thought, that one question came into his mind;

What if he was too late?

"But he IS alive?" He asked instead. Vorador nodded and there was a world of renewed hope in that one gesture.

"Yes." He said and the expression on his face was like the rising sun. "Yes he is alive."

It was a confirmation for them both. For Raziel it assured him that this was the right path to take. For Vorador it confirmed all that Raziel had told him and restored to him a family member he had given up for dead, twice.

"We should not linger." Sally said, breaking the moment. Vorador cleared his throat and twitched his left ear.

"No we should not." He turned to the door. "This way."

He pushed it open and the three of them advanced inside, passing down through a stone stair case to enter the Ziggurat's central pillar.

Inside were Hylden, hundreds of them.

The central core of the spire was hollow, all levels filled with galleries that ran through the outside walls with places to stand. In each of these stood red robed Hylden.

That rumble of sound which had so bothered Raziel was coming from them as they

stood in choir, singing a deep song of praise with such a low tone to it that the pipes that interwove the spire rattled in accompaniment.

The Hylden all were dressed in red robes like Ishtar had been, with that same cowl over their heads blocking their faces from view. Their arms were raised in supplication and their voices steady in their hymn.

Raziel's frown deepened. This only confirmed what he had suspected. The humans who had built the silenced cathedral used focused the songs of their choirs into deadly sound waves during their monolith. Ishtar was clearly copying the invention, probably to the very same purpose.

The Ziggurat however seemed a lot better designed than the cathedral has been and with the weapon augmented by Hylden science, there was no telling of its destructive potential.

Up or down there were dozens of these chambers, all of them egg shaped and stacked one on top of the other going from the Ziggurat's foundations to its very top and each one was filled with singing Hylden.

They paid no attention to them as they past by, travelling through the crapped stone passages that ran behind the alcoves in which they stood. With their eyes closed and their attention so occupied on their song they might not have even noticed.

Following Vorador's lead up through each chamber, Raziel let him guide them on by his sense of how close his sire was.

The blue wraith felt a strange mix of anticipation and dread. Finally he was close to rescuing Janos but at the same time, he knew that Ishtar would surely be waiting for them.

With the Nexus Stone.

They ascended a flight of stairs suddenly and then came out into another chamber.

The chamber was egg shaped like the others but empty, with some pipes curving along the walls towards the ceiling and others lancing directly up from the floor. There were stone alcoves set behind the pipes, running around the outside in a spiral going up in place of the galleries.

Glancing up from their position, Raziel could see through a large round gap in the ceiling that there was another room above this one. It seemed just as large and from his poor vantage point he could only just make out more galleries with many Hylden standing in them.

It was like the other chambers they had seen throughout the tower, meaning these rooms of singing cloaked Hylden must carry on up to the very top of the Ziggurat. A far greater resource of sound than the humans had thought to use with their original construction.

"Sire!" Sally began, leaning over the stone railing and looking down, her black hair trailing past her face. "Down there!" Vorador came quickly down her side and follower her gaze. He breathed in sharply, his ears going erect in attention.

Raziel came over as well and looked down.

Halfway down the chamber in which they stood there was a figure, suspended in mid air by metal cables in the direct centre. They wrapped around arms and legs, causing whoever it was to be held there spread eagled with his limbs stretched out wide. Even from this distance Raziel could make out the blue skin and tattered black wings that were also bound.

Slowly his eyes began to widen as recognition dawned on him.

.

**_"Finally, after such a long search I had found Janos Audron. But seeing him now part of wished that I had not." _**

**_._**

The tenth guardian, the one chosen to safe guard the Reaver blade until the prophesised hero came to claim it was here. Given that duty, Janos had diligently stood his long watch, century after weary century as the world around him grew ever more hostile.

Finally, when he seemed like duty had come to an end, Raziel had unerringly delivered to his enemies an unimpeded path to his door.

And now here he was, revived only be left abandoned and forgotten by those he held dear, trapped and tortured at the hands of his enemies.

And it had been Raziel's fault.

"Janos!" He called out, the echo of his voice lost in the hum of the Ziggurat. The ancient vampire lay there giving no sign that he had heard, head tilted back his long black hair hanging loose from his scalp. He hung there suspended, limp as a rag doll. It was hard to make out the details from this distance.

Raziel leaned over the side, looking down at Audron with growing horror etched into his face. The self loathing that he had felt upon discovering that it had been his past Sarafan self that had murdered Audron was nothing in comparison to what took him now, the realization that he had almost deliberately forced Janos to accept this fate of pain and torment.

With an expression on his face bordering on insane fury, Vorador darted down the stone stairs taking them two at a time towards the level from which his sire hung.

Sally was only a step behind him and Raziel a step behind her, the three of them making their way down towards the ancient as fast as they could.

The level from which Janos was suspended was framed with four large windows that looked out into the central drop. The cables holding his limbs in place were anchored just below each one.

"How do we get him down?" Sally asked when they came to one of them, the cable from which was wrapped around Janos' left leg. "If we cut him loose from those cables he will simply fall into that abyss."

Vorador, who had been on the verge of climbing out onto one of the cables, paused and reconsidered at her words.

Raziel looked the cables over and thought about it quickly, his mind racing to counter this problem to distract him from his turmoil of emotions. Sally was right. Janos was poised so that if they cut him loose from his bondage he would fall the length of the Ziggurat down to its foundations, a fatal drop even for a vampire.

"I will go out there and set him loose from the cables that bind his arms." He told them, pointing with a talon. "If you stay here you can then pull him up by the cables that hold his legs."

Vorador pursed his lips and cast another glance over his sire, seeming to appraise Raziel's suggestion. After a moment he nodded in agreement and stood aside.

Raziel climbed up out of the stone window and onto the cables. Even through his feet he could feel the reverberation of the Ziggurat as the Hylden's chorus reached a new crescendo, the cable trembling in response.

Quickly he made his way along the cable, his determination to get to Janos the only thing keeping him balanced. Had he been any less determined not to fall he probably might well have done so.

Close up, the truly pitiful state Janos was in was more than clear. His body was covered in cuts, deep and shallow. Dried blood ran un-cleaned down his torso to stain his black winds. Long gone were the priestly white robes Raziel had known him to wear. The only thing keeping him decent was the tattered remains of a pair of steel grey pants with a decorating loin cloth hanging loose.

By far the worse thing to see was his face, his skin stretched up into his cheeks. The affects were by no means as scaring at those on a Hylden's face but the influence of imprisonment within the demon realm was unmistakable.

"Janos, Janos can you hear me?" The blue wraith asked, coming towards him inch by inch until he was almost standing over the tenth guardian.

Gingerly, keeping a hand on the cable for balance, he reached out and shook Janos by the shoulder.

The ancient shivered and then pushed an eye half open. For a moment it was unfocused and distant; then it turned to look directly at him.

Both eyes snapped open and Janos stared at him, his expression quickly filling up with horror and dismay.

"No…NO… you can't be here!" He said, his voice so hoarse it was almost a croak. He violently began to struggle, almost shaking Raziel off of the cable. "No more visions please make them stop!"

His head rolled from side to see and he avoided looking at Raziel as if he were the most hideous thing he'd ever seen. He ground his teeth and tried to pull away with more strength then Raziel would have guessed he could have with such an abused body.

No wonder Vorador could not contact him with the whisper. His mind had been damaged by exposure to the demon realm after all.

Raziel felt a lump bob in his throat at the sight of him and guilt flooded through him afresh. It was short lived however as another stronger feeling overtook him. It had come over him suddenly, strong and dampening, that feeling of weakness; that same draining bundle of emotions that accompanied him when in close proximity to the Nexus Stone.

"Why am I not at all surprised that you came here?" The voice echoed suddenly out of the darkness of the chamber, resonating throughout the labyrinth of pipes. Vorador tensed, his ears perking up at the sound. Beside him Sally spun her head in all directions, trying to pick out where the voice was coming from.

It was impossible, it echoed too many times for the source to be known and the sound of the Ziggurat's chorus was all encompassing.

The moment the voice had spoken Raziel had gone very still, not allowing himself the distraction of panic.

"Ishtar." He replied back into the darkness, having recognised the voice instantly. Slowly he turned to look around scanning the curved walls and the hidden places were a figure might remain concealed.

Vorador pulled back his lips to expose his fangs in an animalistic snarl.

"Have you done this to my sire?" He demanded, eyes darting back and forth.

"He serves a purpose here." Ishtar replied dismissively. "To provide my court with a fool they can poke and prod whenever they get bored."

Vorador's ears twitched in severe aggravation but he knew better than to let simple jibes like these put him off his guard. Still it took visible effort for him to retain his composure.

"So Shamash and Marduk are dead are they?" Ishtar's disembodied voice asked ignoring him now. "Fools, the both of them. They put their trust in weapons or science when it is only the grace and favour of the Keeper that we prevail."

Raziel narrowed his eyes and looked down into the abyss below them. The Keeper? The Hylden worshiped that strange creature? Raziel had many misgivings about that being but there was one thing he was sure of and that the Keeper was not an advocate of mass genocide and destruction.

"I have met your god." He said to the shadows. "I doubt very much he favours you or your choice of action."

The silence that followed was filled with an appalled disgust.

"You speak in ignorant disdain of the faith that saw my people through hell itself." Ishtar snapped, his voice echoing momentarily about the chorus of Hylden prayer. He seemed to take a moment to collect him. "But it doses not matter. Come here for Audron, come here to stop me. You're too late for either."

Suddenly the floor beneath them shook violently, a shuddering thud than seemed to go up and down through the tower. Raziel had to grab onto the cable beneath him to keep from being dislodged and even Vorador and Sally had to catch for support on whatever they could grab.

The Hylden that filled the many floors of the tower did not waver however from their song, and seemed to only intensity their singing.

Still clutching onto the cable, Raziel happened to be looking directly down. Out of the darkness below, a twisting writhing shape was slowly spiralling up; snaking its way through the series of pipes.

Whatever it was, it was rising and getting closer.

Scrambled up to a precarious balance, Raziel quickly darted to Janos' side and began cutting through the cable with his right wrist. The ancient vampire, apparently not sensing the oncoming danger, struggled with the blue wraith and was only partially subdued when Raziel slapped him across the face.

After a moment of intense sawing, the strands of metal that made up the cable came free with a loud snapping sound. It whipped back and Janos arm dropped free.

Below Raziel could see that the thing rising up towards them was not a part of the Ziggurat itself but rather a living creature, an insect with thousands of spindly legs carrying it up through the pipes.

"Hurry!" Vorador called out frantically, looking down to gauge the rate of the monsters speed.

With speed born of panic, Raziel attacked the other cable binding Janos left arm. This cable took longer to cut through than the first being thick with more strands and only with determined effort did the wraith finally managed to severe it.

He was not a moment too soon for as he and Janos began to swing away, free from the bindings, the creature drove past them with a large mouth full of many rows of serrated teeth snapping at their passage.

Raziel wrapped his body around Janos and so when they slammed into the side wall of the pit the blue wraith was able to cushion the ancient vampire from the blow. They had not swung that far so Raziel did not deplete his energy reverses by any large amount by the act.

The centipede like demon kept on climbing a short distance and then curved around it, looping until its massive head came up to glare down at them. It was a hideous creature, dull green on the underside and a steel grey on top. Many small green eyes looked out from positions all over its head. Its body was segmented all the way down its length and each segment had dozen legs to it. All the hundreds of legs down its side wiggled in unison giving the whole body a fan like appearance as it moved.

Its jaws were a mass of slicing pincers and spread out wide around wide mouth full of those curved teeth

Out of the gaps in its exoskeleton there pulsed a bright green fire that burned from within, emerald flames bursting out when it moved.

Standing on top its head with crossed arms was Ishtar. His red cowl was draw partly up over his face but that did not hide the triumphant smile that curved his lips.

Raziel looked for it and sure enough, there it was, latched onto his chest like before; the dreaded Nexus Stone.

"Soon the Ziggurat will crescendo with the voices of all my kinsmen in prayer!" He declared, tilting his head to gesture up to the chamber above where the singing carried on, purposely oblivious to what transpired here. "A hymn to the glory of the Keeper."

He spread his arms wide, still smiling that smile of victory.

"These pipes will channel that sound and send it forth in all directions, a wave of destruction that will destroy the minds of every filthy vampiric creature in Nosgoth."

Raziel looked up again, realising that they had come on the cusp of the Hylden's finally solution to the vampires. The Ziggurat was building its sound waves, sending them echoing back and forth through the pipes. Once the sound had reached its peek, the unleashed blast of sound wound destroy any vampiric creature within Nosgoth, and probably a large amount of other species as well.

"I will purify this world in the sound of rejoicing!" Ishtar cried. Raziel could see the eyes under his cowl from this angle and he could see that there was no hint of hysterical madness or delirium. On this face was the firm and solid confidence that he had seen before during their confrontation at the Sanctuary of the clans, altered only by his satisfied smile.

So far Raziel had see the madness of the demon realm affect individual Hylden in different ways. Some were driven to kill indiscriminately, others to plot and scheme for murder and destruction. In Ishtar's case its affects had been subtle, taking his already well fixed religious believes and altering them so that he saw it as his heavenly duty to purge the world first of Vampires and then of anything but his own kind.

Raziel could not allow this.

"Tell me." He asked. "Marduk and Shamash have enlightened me already to what they contributed to the curse. Blood thirst, weakness of the elements… what did you add?"

He knew the answer the moment a superior grin parted the Hylden ecclesiasts' face.

"The one thing, about all else, that would make them suffer." He said without so much as a moment's hesitation. "Immorality and sterility! No reincarnation through their despicable Wheel of Fate to give them comfort." He crouched low on his beasts head glaring at them maliciously. "It is the best joke in the world! The vampires, who were so zealous and god fearing had their deity spit in their eye when they became undying!"

Vorador's face contorted into a scowl but Raziel held up a hand to stop him.

"Vorador, Sally." The blue wraith said, narrowing his eyes and latching onto the cables that they hung from.

Sally looked down to him, but Vorador's eyes were still locked on the monstrous insect before them.

"Retrieve Janos… he is mine."

Ishtar raised an eyebrow, looking down at Raziel from his vantage point his expression quizzically.

"I'm yours?" He asked and then laughed again, holding up a hand almost claw like in font of him.

"Have you so easily forgotten?" He asked, laying his hand down onto his chest the tips of his fingers touching the Nexus Stone. "You can not even touch me so long as I have this!"


	29. Madness

The demon insect screeched loudly, a column of intense green fire bellowing out from between its jaws. Raziel leapt out of the way just in time, grabbing onto one of the cables that still bound Janos further up, swinging back and froth like a pendulum under he got his balance.

Ishtar did not give him time to recover, directing his beast at him again. Two pincer like legs under its head shot out, stabbing forward and into the stone where moments ago Raziel had just been. Reacting at the last second he had propelled himself off the wall, spiralling with acrobatic grace until he came down over the side of the monster. With a crunch his talons bit into the tough exoskeleton and held him there.

Meanwhile Vorador was almost frantically pulling on the cable, inch by inch hauling his half comatose sire up to safety. Raziel kept an eye on his progress, knowing that he would have to keep Ishtar distracted until they were safely out of the way.

"You must think me utterly simple to believe this all a random series of events!" The leader of the House of Faith spat down at him, his demon twisting up and down to dislodge its second passenger.

Raziel clung on with his talons sunk in as deep as they would do, the rest of him being flung above like a reed in a typhoon. The insect hissed at him, arching back with its mouth opening wide so that he could see down its tooth ridden throat.

Quickly Raziel scrambled up, clutching onto a ridge of exoskeleton to hoist himself out of the way of the snapping maw.

"You killed Shamash, you murdered Marduk and now you come for my head." On the creatures head, Ishtar lifted both arms wide, fingers outspread. "I know who it is you bend your knee to!"

Raziel only had a moment to move out of the way, his experience in fighting Ishtar before at the pillars coming in handy. Instinct told him to move and he leapt away just in time as Ishtar projected his soul at him, shooting forth like a bolt of lightning. He avoided the brunt of the force but the attack burnt the tips of his wings as he tumbled past.

With a gesture, Ishtar commanded his creature to slam its side into the wall of the Ziggurat. The blow nearly knocked Raziel clear and the blue wraith held on by a one hand. Quickly he began to climb back up, passing up its far side so that its bulk sheltered him from the blasts Ishtar might discharge at him.

With a growl of effort, Vorador hoisted up the cable a finally time and Janos Audron came limply up over the edge of the precise. Sally caught the ancient vampire in her arms as her sire set to pulling the cables off his ankles, freeing Janos from bondage. He had been so starved that his rib cage stood out in relief and his skin had dry flaky quality to it, peeling in places. His feathers were even turning grey and a few of them were dropping loose over the stone floor.

"Sire!" Vorador began in earnest dismay, kneeling down before the blue skinned ancient and holding him by the shoulders. "Can you hear me?"

Janos lifted his head, mouth parted slightly in an expression devoid of any response. It was like he was a walking corpse, emotionless and flat.

But then some measure of recognition came back into his eyes and he slowly reached up and placed a hand on Vorador's chest.

"My son." He said in a horse voice. "You came back for me."

Sally happened to be watching Vorador's face at that moment she noticed something there she had never seen before. She watched Vorador's careful control of his emotions slip and his expression displayed all the pride and relief he was undoubtedly feeling.

The moment past briefly and her sire was quick to collect himself again, becoming impassive and controlled.

"Yes, my sire." He said in as best a neutral tone he could manage. "I would not resign you to such a fate as this as long as you draw breath."

Janos hung his head again, the effort of pushing past his tortured exterior even for a moment having taken its toll. Sally held him up; checking him over quickly to gauge how much strength was left in him.

"He needs to feed badly, sire." She said to her sire. She looked up but Vorador was looking out at the far wall of the Ziggurat, where the demon insect was sprawled. It was curving back and forth over the surface, twisting around to try and get at the blue wraith steadily making his way up its back.

Ishtar had remained in place on top of the head of the creature, directing blasts of energy from his own soul at Raziel whenever he had a clear shot. Raziel was narrowing the distance between them slowly but steadily.

Ishtar did not appear alarmed in the slightest, as well he might not. The odds were stacked heavily in his favour. With the Nexus Stone there was no way Raziel could hurt him and it was only a matter of time before the Ziggurat's song culminated and it sang its serenade of death all over Nosgoth.

Even if by some flux Raziel did manage to get close enough to kill him, the Ziggurat's purpose would be fulfilled regardless.

Even while trying to climb around the insect and avoid the attacks from Ishtar, Raziel desperately began to look for some means of stopping this doomsday scenario.

"Only**_ she_** could have arranged this!" Ishtar carried on, capturing his attention suddenly. The Hylden priest was starting down the neck of the centipede, one hand raised out before him claw like. "The princess played you like a fiddle. You are little more than her assassin!"

Raziel grabbed onto an edge of a section of exoskeleton and using the beasts own momentum, propelled himself out of the way of Ishtar's blast. Even as he tumbled the blue wraith cuped his hands and focused a bolt of telekinetic force between his talons, unleashing it directly at Ishtar's head.

The Hylden contemptuously slapped the bolt out of the air with a wave of his soul energy but that momentary distraction had given Raziel an opening. He leapt forward and threw himself at Ishtar, talons outstretched.

The Hylden was too quick to be caught completely off guard and so the two of them grappled together, talons locked around fingers as they tried to out do each other.

"Damkina uses you, boy!" Ishtar snarled; his lips pulled back over his teeth beneath his red cowl. "She uses you as a means to an end!"

Raziel clenched his talons around Ishtar's hands to prevent him from using them to grasp the Nexus Stone, pushing him backwards towards the edge of his demon. But Ishtar was not powerless and retaliated with a focus burst of his soul, a shockwave that threw Raziel back and almost over the edge of the worms' head.

"But she will not stop me!" Ishtar continued, sounding a little out of breath. "I will succeed where Hash'ak'gik failed! It was I who saw the greatest weakness of the vampires and how to use it against them! It was I who conceived the greatest traits of the curse of agony, the touch of the divine, Immortality!

I will purify this world; cleanse it of all life starting with the descendants of our hated enemies!"

Raziel tried to pull himself back up but in that same moment Ishtar laid a finger against the orb at the centre o the nexus stone, calling upon its mysterious powers. Instantly Raziel felt the strength of his very being bleed out of him. It was just the same as before, that horrible sensation of his essence being drained away into nothingness. He gasped out load in dismay, trying to hold onto the edge of the exoskeleton but his strength was slipping away so rapidly.

Ishtar walked closer and the nearer he came the more pronounced the effects of the stone became, the energy that sustained Raziel's body and essence sliding out of him like water down a drain.

Unable to hold on, he felt his talons slacken their grip and he fell. Dropping he tumbled back from the insect, falling towards the abyss of darkness far below.

He would have plummeted straight to the bottom had not Vorador caught him, latching onto him with a strong hold of telekinesis. The ancient vampire stood on the edge of the stone platform, hand outstretched forward him, palm up, Raziel had stopped falling just at the same level as his hand.

Quickly Raziel was brought to safety, floated down until he was deposited firmly on solid ground. This strange uncharacteristic and magnanimous gesture complete, Vorador quickly drew the cruelly barbed sword at his hip and turned to confront the leader of the Hylden house of Faith.

"You are no better than the zealots of the Wheel of Fate who butchered your kind in eons past." He said in a flat tone, his stance hostile. "I will not speak for the rest of the Hylden, but YOU deserved your banishment."

Ishtar glared down at him, eyes narrowing in angry silts beneath his red hood. Instead of arguing he simply raised both hands high.

"Children of the void!" He called out and his voice echoed far more than it should, even in the cavernous structure of the Ziggurat. "Come! Your master beckons!"

The centipede demon on which he stood reared up as if moving out of the way, arching back like a coiled snake ready to spring at a moments notice.

Suddenly all around them there were bright green flashes of light. Holes were opening in thin air, torn gaps in the fabric of reality through which came shafts of bright sickly green light. Pushing their way out of these many holes can demons, dozens of them in all shapes and sizes.

Mostly they were of the small, green scaled variety with blades for forearms and a wide gaping mouth. A few however burst forth, sparking with bolts of electricity that gathered between their pincer like hands.

They were frenzied, tearing at each other before even one of them so much as noticed the four beings crouched on the stone walkway with them. These demons must have been Ishtar's personal attack dogs, starved to make them more vicious and intent on tearing open whoever Ishtar directed them against.

Vorador glanced right and left, seeing that they were cornered on both sides. To the left a tall lightning demon with its horns dragging along the top of the stone ceiling was edging closer, electrically charged saliva dripping from its maw.

To the right was an equally tall creature with pale red skin and thick bulging pouches on its shoulders that vented puffs of green gas that stung the nose with their stink.

"Kill them all!" The Hylden priest declared, pointing at them with a long bone thin finger.

The lightning demon screeched, let off its lease and started forward. Vorador's answering blow was so swift it blurred, his sword dancing up and then across; slicing up through the exposed rib cage to the collar bone before the skin split apart. A fountain of blood geysered forth before Vorador kicked the beast in the chest, knocking it back over the edge of the abyss letting it fall away.

From behind, the gas demon started forward blowing its deadly acidic smoke out before it. Sally swing away from the mist, standing protectively over the near comatose Janos Audron and the limp Raziel beside him.

The demon reached for her with bend elongated claws but she racked it across the arm with her talons. It drew back and Sally was given some room to manoeuvre.

Raziel watched from his half crotched position below as she, strangely, began to draw her claws across her own forearms. She cut herself deep, blood leaking out through the slashes to trickle down her scaled skin.

Then she began to move, lifting her arms to either side and the blood that flowed from her wounds shifted with her; moving like an entranced snake. Whipping her arms forward she directed the blood she wielded at the demon.

Raziel belatedly realised that she was using an advanced form of the rare vampiric ability known as 'Blood Gout', the technique of using ones own blood as a weapon. Kain had once used a weaker version of the same ability but had abandoned the technique as too costly and impratical.

Sally displayed her use of the trait with the skill of an accomplished practitioner, her blood turning into blades of scarlet that sliced through the demons in her way. As they cleaved through the flesh of these creatures they siphoned off the blood that spilled forth, carrying it away from the wounds to flow back into Sally's own body. She was feeding as much as fighting.

But the two of them were fighting a loosing battle, for as many demons they cut down, another two seemed to take their place.

It was only through sheer force of will that Raziel managed to push himself back up, struggling every inch of the way until he stood on legs that threatened to drop out from under him at any moment. He could feel the insidious draining effects of the Nexus Stone intensify in response to the effort he exerted. He countered with more strength, calling on reverses he didn't know he had.

Before he could move, Ishtar's giant demonic insect burst forward and grabbed him in its jaws. He was snapped up by the huge mouth and lifted away, the hooked teeth closing down on him. The insect tiled its body up, hoisting him high into the air so the gaping max leading down a sticky throat that spat flames up at him was directly below him threatening to engulf him.

"Goodbye, my saviour." Ishtar sneered condescendingly, laying a hand on the stone at his breast. At that touch the draining affects of the stone grew, stronger and stronger. Desperately Raziel held onto the lip of the beast with both his hands and feet, trying to keep the mouth open through sheer physical force.

For a terrible, soul chilling moment Raziel felt himself slipping, loosing the struggle with the stone.

"..Raziel…" Janos breathed and he blinked. In that action part of his haze seemed to fall away and his face became reflective, thoughtful and collected. In that moment he was himself again.

As he looked upon Raziel on the verge of plunging into the gaping mouth, his eyes filled with alarm and rage.

"Raziel!" He yelled, vaulting forward straining his deprived body. Ishtar looked around in alarm as suddenly Janos flew up from the stone platform with his wings spread. Even while struggling not to fall Raziel turned his head to look in surprise as well.

"No! I will not let him fall again!"

Audron flew at the priest and struck him on the chin with a clenched fist, the blow knocking Ishtar back several paces. Janos did not give him change to recover, grabbing him by the throat with one hand and tearing at him with the talons on his free hand.

"Get off me, you feathered monster!" Ishtar growled, striking back at the winged vampire in his face. The two of them struggled, wrestling back and forth on top of the monsters head. The creature, evidentially confused, turned around to try and see what was happening and began to close its mouth.

Raziel used the opportunity to vault out from between its lips, hanging onto the creature by the edge of its crested head. With Ishtar distracted by a direct attack the effects of the stone had been negated, all the sapped strength slowly but surely returning to his body. Still the after effects left him groggy and disoriented. Still he had enough wit and strength left to pull himself up onto the head in time to see Janos lashed out and grasp the front of Ishtar's clothes. At the same time Ishtar kicked him in the stomach. With a sharp jerk Janos was thrown back, wrenching free a cascade of bright golden jewels and red fabric.

But tight in his grasp was the Nexus Stone itself.

"The stone!" Ishtar snarled; his voice hoarse and shrill. Janos tumbled away, crashing into the stone platform on the far side of the Ziggurat. "Give me that back, Audron!"

Before he could direct his worm to go after the winged vampire, a hand laid itself on his shoulder. He shot a stunned look back over his shoulder.

"I think not, Ishtar." Raziel remarked coldly, the grip of his talons quite firm. With the stone out of the way this was now an even playing field.

Slowly the Hylden priest's expression turned to a savage snarl, his calm demeanour finally broken. That afforded Raziel no small degree of satisfaction. "Now then… let us see how confident you are against me without the stone's power to hide behind."


	30. Rekindling

His soul bursting forth, a suggestion of a figure outlined in light, Ishtar flew out of the way further down the neck of his tamed demon and away from the reach of Raziel's talons.

In reaction the worm swung its entire body upwards, slamming its head with a tremendous crash into the roof of the chamber above. Raziel dove across the wide head just in time, catching onto a ridge of a section of exoskeleton for a hold. Above, the song of the singing house of faith faltered quite suddenly.

Screams of alarm replaced the words of praise and a few robed Hylden fell through the circular gap; plummeting down screaming past the demons to the dark abyss below. Even with the loss of some of its choir, the song of the Ziggurat did not diminish. The slow building vibration had been growing stronger and stronger; the entire spire seemed to vibrate with its resonance.

Ishtar paid no heed to the plight of his kinsmen and instead darted down the length of his long insect demon, straight towards the still figure of Janos Audron. The ancient was crouched on the stone ring on the far side of the chamber, clasping tightly to himself the Nexus Stone.

Janos would try to protect the artefact with his life but in his weakened state he was no match for Ishtar one on one and Raziel had no intention of letting the Hylden get his hands on the stone again.

He was too far away to be stopped directly or even be struck by bolt of force. Instead, Raziel decided to cut the very ground out from under him. Holding onto the ridge for support, he brought his arm back, tensed and then stabbed his talons forward. With a sleep tearing sound very much like torn fabric, his talons stabbed into the eye on the left hand side of the demons head.

The eyeball ruptured with a spray of stinking translucent juice and blood, bursting forth to splatter down his front.

The screech of pain the insect made in response was like the shrillest pig's squeal, its entire body writhing back in agony. The convulsion caused Ishtar to loose his footing and he stumbled, unable to balance himself on the back of the twisting centipede.

Raziel sprang forward, scrambling over the body of the creature as fast as he could; racing towards Ishtar with his talons ready to strike.

Ishtar managed to see him coming and dodged the swings, sliding around the lunges the blue wraith made and smashing a kick into his chest in retaliation.

Screeching, a lightning demon swung its sparking pincers around in a wide arc, aiming the blow at Vorador's head. The limb met the vampire's sword and the blade cut vertically up through the flesh and bone, slicing it neatly in half.

Vorador drew his sword out trailing blood and cartilage and, reversing it slammed it point first through the creature's chest. It pieced the heart easily and the demon toppled back with a gurgle, blood spurting from the mouth. With this last obstacle cleared, Vorador's path was clear

"Sire!" He shouted, vaulting over the body and coming to the side of his creator. Janos was just sitting there, arms and wings curved protectively about himself and the prize he had torn from Ishtar's grip. Janos was looking deep into the polished olive stone in the centre of the golden scarab setting, his expression enthralled. Once more he was oblivious to the world around him.

Vorador gently knelt beside him, laying his hands on his Janos' own.

"I thank you, my lord." He said softly. "Let me have the stone." Janos gave no sign that he had understood, or even if he had heard, but his hands relaxed around the Nexus Stone and Vorador lifted it away from him without resistance.

In its agony, the demon centipede whipped his entire body around and slammed itself against the side of the wall. This blow was far stronger and was sufficient to do a great deal of damage, the stone and brick crumbling away at the impact leaving a large hole in the side of the wall, cracks spreading out from the new opening.

Ishtar crouched on the top of an inverted 'L' shaped pipe, snarling down at the scene in obvious irritation. The louder and louder disturbances in this chamber were beginning to distract the attention of his house from their choir duty, their song waning.

There was Raziel's only hope of stopping this doomsday scenario. He had to create enough of a distraction so that there would be no way the Hylden could reach the genocidal crescendo.

Gazing up at the cracked side of the Ziggurat's wall he guessed he knew just how to do that.

Ishtar even obliged him, stabbing down at them all with a trembling finger.

"Destroy them!" He said with a voice that wavered. "Leave nothing, not even their bones!"

After the maiming it had received at the hands of the blue wraith, the demon insect was more then happy to oblige.

It snapped at him, its massive jaws seeking to devour him if he let go.

Clinging onto the head, he made sure that its good eye could see him and using that he kept the creature tugging in that one direction to get at him. Blinded in one eye and maddened with the pain it was ignoring its instincts that might have told it that it was being led into a trap.

When, finally, it was pushed past caring and only knew only its desperate need to kill that which had been the source of so much pain, it screeched and slammed it's had forward.

By then Raziel had positioned it in the right spot, so that when it came forward its head crashed into the compromised wall, bringing more of it down in a cascade of broken masonry. The sound was deafening and with that interruption the song of the Hylden began to falter.

Sally had to race out of the way but she was fast enough, sliding between the startled demons that looked up, that moment of hesitation depriving them of the opportunity to escape.

The falling stone collapsed onto the path, crushing both them and pinning the head of the demon insect down. More and more rubble was falling loose now, smashing down onto the pile, adding more and more weight before finally…

Even Raziel flinched at the sound of that crack, the unmistakable sound of bone breaking into dozens of pieces all at once.

The head had been completely crushed, the skull shattered into fragments from the pressure and from between gaps in the in the rubble oozed thick rivulets of blood and brain matter.

A shudder ran the length its body from its tip and down to where its tail must end far below. The legs all along its side jabbed out erratically in all directions in a series of terrible convulsions. Then it grew still, its body going limp and collapsing with a thud against the Ziggurat wall, breaking it even further.

It twitched several times in its death throws but finally it went still. Slowly the long body began to slide backwards, its weight pulling it out from its precarious hold on the wall. Stone and brick tumbled away with it as the monstrous insect crashed down the entire length of the Ziggurat, smashing against the wall of the inner walls of the structure several times before it collided with the foundations.

That impact shook the entire spire from bottom to top, sudden cracks running across the walls and ceiling. There was a loud crunch from somewhere below, a reverberating sensation that was less sound than force. The entire spire seemed to lean slightly to one side, the floor beneath their feet changing angle to a definite slope. The song of the Hylden House of Faith wavered, panicked cries breaking through the chorus and then when finally, jagged slabs of stone started falling down from the ceiling it broke entirely. Cries of alarm blocked out the song completely and the Ziggurat's building hum came to a stop.

Suddenly, in this display of structural deficiency, Raziel saw the weakness of the spire. Like all Hylden structures it was built for a singular purpose, the harnessing of the sound of the singers inside and unleash it as a destructive force outside. But the humans who had built the Cathedral on which this structure had been based had also taken other factors into account, such as its need to remain standing against constant attacks by vampires. But that was not the Hylden way, they built one building for one purpose and that lapse of judgement had cost the Ziggurat the endurance to withstand any sort of serious damage.

Looking up at his spire as it began to slowly collapse, Ishtar's face was twisted with an expression of supreme anger and frustration. Evidentially that had clearly dawned on him as well.

"Damn you, Raziel!" He snarled, spittle flying from his lips in his fury as he turned to face the blue wraith.

Raziel stared him down and shrugged.

"It's been done." He remarked and quickly rolled to the side as Ishtar sent forth his soul as a projectile of burning energy, smashing into the spot where he had been moments before and breaking the stone platform to let it crumble down into the darkness.

The spire of the Ziggurat began to shudder and convulse, massive cracks spreading down its length from the outside. Screams of terror ran through the tower as the many Hylden standing in the galleries abandoned their posts and ran for whatever exits they could find, scrambling down the twisting stair cases to try and escape. Some stairs collapsed underneath them, plummeting screaming priests into darkness.

"Sire, this place is collapsing!" Sally declared, rushing to Vorador's side. "We must leave before we are crushed!"

"You were going nowhere!" Ishtar snarled, dropping down almost next to them. His eyes burned with an intense green fire of madness, teeth bared and arms spread wide with his fingers arched like claws. "You've ruined everything!" His soul came out, blasting forth as a vengeful incandescent ball of energy.

Before it could impact, Raziel leapt at him from behind. His talons sank into Ishtar's flesh, tearing through skin and muscle until they grated against bone.

"No!" Ishtar hoarsely cried out, trying to shake the blue wraith off of him. But Raziel had him now, his grip unbreakable. The talons of his free hand stabbed into the Hylden's body again and again, puncturing him and leaving massive bloodied holes with each stab.

Then, to finish the job, Raziel stabbed his hand directly into his stomach and pulled back sharply; dragging with him the twisted red intestines of the Hylden's belly. The organs ruptured forth with an intense spray of blood. His life spilling out of him, Ishtar stumbled back and collided with the wall.

"No... I can't die yet." He said but blood was beginning to form on his lips. "Too much left to do!"

Raziel flicked the blood and flesh off his talons as he walked up, watching the Hylden slid down into a slumped sitting position.

"Can't let my people… can't let them ….die." Ishtar was vainly trying to force his intestines back in but he had lost too much blood and he was struggling to breath.

Raziel narrowed his eyes, looking at the spectacle with something approaching pity. The Hylden were, in a way, no responsible for their actions. The madness of the demon dimension had robbed those most affected of any empathy or respect for other living things. All they knew to be good was the continuation and well being of their own kind.

"I have no intention of massacring the Hylden, Ishtar." He said, offering the priest at least this much. "Even if life goes on for us, there is no one left to do you or your people harm."

Ishtar leaned back against the wall, coughing blood and worse. His body was trembling violently.

"N.. trust no one…" He managed to spit. "It's how we survived. Kee…keep to ourselves, destroy outsiders."

Savagely he turned his head to glare defiantly at the blue wraith.

"It is our way!" Then he coughed once, a racking tearing sound and slumped back against the wall going limp.

His body lay there, still for a moment and then piece by piece his soul began to emerge from the corpse. It came slowly, as if reluctant to leave the flesh, a sparking essence crackling with power.

Raziel did then what he knew he must do. He drew down his cowl and pulled the soul towards him.

.

**_"As I consumed Ishtar's fanatical soul, I took to me his ability to project my soul as a form of energy. When that new gift came to me it did so in a form I was more than familiar with."_**

.

Ishtar's soul was not like any other spirit he had absorbed before. It was like trying to swallow a live eel as it struggled to get away. Grasping it hard with his mind and every ounce of willpower in his soul, Raziel dragged it down slowly into himself. Even in death Ishtar refused to submit and went to oblivion kicking and screaming.

The surge of energy that burst through the blue wraith's body upon its absorption shook him down to his core, rocking him to his knees his arms held out before him.

The ability of the Hylden priest, the ability to project his soul as physical energy, was coming forth and his own soul struggled to deal with it. He felt as if his own spirit was bursting out of his body in several places at the same time, ready to fly apart never to be whole again.

His body was glowing with a light that pulsed from within. He lit the entire chamber with the light, the light expanding out until it filled the entire collapsing Ziggurat.

Outside the spire the Serioli vampires, who had retreated once their role as distraction had been fulfilled, watched from a nearby cliff as every opening in the spire radiated with that light. For a brilliant instant, the entire Hylden settlement was lit up like a star in the northern sky.

Then the light retracted, sliding back over the stones and condensing in one spot; spiralled like a coiled snake around Raziel's right arm.

Slowly the blue wraith turned his head to look at the spark of constant energy that gently snaked across his skin. He stared at it for a long time, slowly coming to understand what it meant.

It was impossible… and yet there it was.

He did not react immediately with horror and revulsion as he might once have to such a development however, for he could sense no second presence and realised this was a not a curse but a blessing. Ishtar's ability was being used in the only way his soul knew how to remodel itself.

.

**_"And then I remembered the words of the Keeper, for the he had asked me why I had referred to the Soul Reaver in third person."_**

.

Slowly he stood up, holding his right arm out in front of himself watching the band of energy twist itself up his arm and around his talons.

Once again, as he had first done when he had been revived in this dead era, he felt the same laugh begin to bubble up out of him. It was a slow chuckle at first, growing more intense and hysterical with each passing moment.

.

**_"In that instant I realised the profound but simple truth. There was and had never been anything to fear from the Reaver. I could no more fear it than I could fear my own arm or leg."_**

.

He thrust his arm high in the air and called forth the Reaver blade.

**_._**

**_"How could I fear myself?"_**

.

The blade came faithfully, bursting forth from his palm like the blast of fire from a dragons mouth. The blade screeched as it erupted, a sword of spiritual fire feared by the entire world since time immemorial.

Seeing it, even in his mentally damaged state, Janos recoiled slightly with his wings coming forwards to shield himself from the sight of it. Vorador and Sally only stared in mute incomprehension and wonder.

Now it truly was his own soul, forged into a weapon and projected through the ability Ishtar's soul had given to him. He watched it flare about him and felt was if he were looking into a mirror, seeing himself from the outside in; a sensation of double observation as he were looking back at himself from the sword as well,

In the white fire he saw the truth which had been in front of him since he had been reborn in this ruined body.

"I AM THE SOUL REAVER!" He declared with a voice so loud that it reverberated through the Ziggurat's falling spire.

The Ziggurat was crumbling down, collapsing quickly down to the Hylden settlement below.

As the chamber began to break apart around them, Vorador held forth the Nexus Stone and called upon its power.

For not only did the stone diminish the power of the Soul Reaver, it could also open doorways to almost any location the wielder desired.

The four of them stepped through the portal that opened just as the Ziggurat trembled one final time and then crashed down to the ground with a sound that was heard for miles in any direction.


	31. Dawn

A cool mist came in over the forgotten isles some few days later, a white haze that blanketed everything in an enveloping shroud that made it impossible to see more than a few feet in front of oneself.

Engulfed by the featureless void, the castle of the Cabal might well have been floating in nothingness.

Raziel paused to look out the window for perhaps the tenth time, a nervous habit he seemed to be developing unconsciously. Still nothing, not so much as the stone of the cliff on which the castle was built was visible. Raziel was finding that he really didn't like fog.

After the cataclysmic events and the collapse of the Ziggurat tower, the quiet refuge of the fortress was even more disturbing than the battle itself.

Since then, Raziel had tested the limitations of his restored ability to summon the wraith blade. It was no longer a symbiotic weapon or even a parasite. It was a projection of his own soul; forged into the blade his body was familiar with. Ishtar's gift had allowed him to simultaneously exist as both a wraith and a wraith-blade.

This was not without consequence however. As the blade was now a projection of his soul it fed of his own energy in order to manifest. The longer he summoned the sword the larger its drain on his reverses became.

He would have to ration its use in battle for moments only when such strength was necessary.

As happy as he had been to find it gone upon his awakening, its return did not cause him the opposite effect as perhaps he might have expected. For a long time the Reaver had been a symbol of his inescapable fate, damnation to an eternity of insanity within the sword. Its absence had meant his freedom and its return might have meant his doom, had he not realised the truth.

He was the sword and the sword was him. They were not too beings but one, now finally unified in body, mind and soul. The blade was his to wield with no pre-determined destiny to drag him to oblivion.

He turned then, hearing a soft click at the door at the far end of the corridor. Sally came out, holding a silver try in one hand. With no battle to fight and thus no need for her chameleonic stealth, she was wearing clothes over her scales; a thick garment made of wool from the tough mountain goats that grazed further inland on his rocky island. While scales allowed her to camouflage herself far more easily, it had the draw back of not keeping her body warm on his cold island and so whenever possible she wore thick, large clothes to insulate herself.

The expression on her face as she came through the door was one of dismal oppression. Sally was, at Vorador's request, tending to the needs Janos Audron. After his captivity in the demon dimension and the abuse he suffered at Ishtar's hands, Janos was terribly weak and malnourished. Vorador had been so concerned for his sire's health he had been prepared to kill every human on the island and drain their blood. Sally however had assured him that she had had enough stock piled through the Serioli method of a surplus of bottled blood; so that they could spare their live flock for further rationing.

"How is he?" Raziel asked as she came near. She stopped and looked at him for a moment and then shook her head. Raziel noticed faintly she seemed not to have fed recently herself.

"He drinks so little each day." She said warily. "I try to get him to take more but barely even notices my presence, most of the time." She lifted a hand and ran her talons through her short hair. "I never knew Janos personally, only from what my sire said about him but it pains me to see what they have done to him."

Raziel took his with relative calm and nodded once. Then he proceeded past her to the door through which she had come.

Janos had been placed in a bed in one of the largest chambers, in what Raziel highly supposed had been Vorador's own bedroom. It was a vast room with many elaborate pieces of furniture carved out of stone, rather than wood. As the island did not have a large section of forest, almost all furniture had been carved from the abundance of other building materials.

The one exception in the room was the large bed Janos was lying in, propped up against pillows of mountain goat wool.

He seemed no better than he had been when they had rescued him, albeit cleaner and with his wounds tended to.

Raziel approached the bed mournfully, his eyes never leaving the ravaged face of the tenth guardian. Janos was lying there; eyes open looking up at the ceiling above and seemed not to even notice him approach.

.

"**_Janos had committed sins like the rest of us this I know knew, but his long vigil over the Soul Reaver blade waiting for me had more than made up for them." _**

**_._**

The blue wraith looked over the one he had called his mentor, noting down every blemish that had distorted the body and engraving them in his memory; forcing him to look upon the damage that through his negligence he had inflicted on Janos.

**_._**

**_"To see him reduced to a hollowed out shell was almost more than I could bear. All he had ever done was support me as best he could and I had left him to suffer this fate, heedful of only my own well being." _**

.

Leaning over the bed, he tried to catch the attention of the ancient vampire.

"Janos." He began, slowly and in as low a tone as possible. "Can you hear me?"

The golden eyes animated themselves, turning to look full at him in response.

"Do you know who I am?" Raziel pressed, hoping that if Audron was going to recognise and respond to Vorador then he might do the same for him. As it was, Janos did seem to recognise him but not in the way he had hoped.

The winged ancient shook his head on his pillow, a strained expression of intense inner turmoil twisting is stretched face.

"No. no you can't be here!" He said. His voice at least seemed improved since his rescue, far less hoarse. "I killed you! They made me kill you!"

Raziel stared at him, dawning comprehension reflected in his slowly widening eyes.

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**_"And suddenly I realised why Janos was so insistent that I could not be real. The last time he had seen me, he had been possessed by the Hylden general, the being known as Hash,Ak,Gik._**

**_._**

That had been when the Pillars had collapsed and the Hylden lord had leapt from Mortanious' dead body to possess that of the recently revived Janos, the element they needed in order to ensure that their plans succeeded. Janos had fought the possession as much as he could but the will of the Hylden had been stronger.

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**_"Under the Hylden's control, Janos had engaged me in battle and had destroyed my physical body, returning me to the foot of my former master. Janos did not know that as a being of the spectral world, I can not die in the physical and thus had assumed that he had destroyed the saviour he had waited so long for. The guilt of that must have slowly driven him over the edge into madness." _**

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That realization twisted inside Raziel like a knife. He wanted to tell Janos that it had not been his fault, that had had not killed him, that everything he had suffered so much for had not been lost. But he knew that in his present state, Janos would not understand his words and even if he did, he would simply believe himself to be suffering delusions through on by his dementia.

Perhaps time would alter this, but for the moment at least Janos was trapped in a personal cage of guilt and horror.

In this, there was nothing Raziel could do for him and his mere presence was causing him a great deal of anxiety.

"I'm so sorry…" The blue wraith managed to say before he got up and left, leaving Janos to find a way out of his inner prison himself.

In the massive dinning hall of the fortress, Vorador was pacing back and forth with his arms crossed behind him in the small of his back.

When Raziel entered, he saw the ancient vampire was not alone. Standing off to one side unobtrusively was one of the Serioli, winged tucked behind his back tightly to keep them out of the way in the close confines with the tables and chairs all around. His armour was dented in many places and with the curved axe at his side and the long scar across his face, Raziel recognised him as Ansu, the right hand man of Ajatar Cabre.

"The loss of the leaders of all three houses have sent the Hylden into chaos, nothing is organised." He was saying and Raziel kept quiet as to not interrupt them. Vorador noticed his entry but said nothing to it either. Clearly Ansu was in the middle of some sort of report.

Ever since the joint attack on the Ziggurat, Ajatar was keeping in close communication with Vorador; keeping him updated regularly on Serioli and Hylden activities. "No one is in control."

Vorador snorted derisively at this.

"Fine, then let it stay that way." He remarked and he sounded satisfied. The recovery of Janos had put some more of his old fire back into him. Ansu however did not look quite so optimistic about the state of affairs.

"Someone is eventually going to restore order." He said with a grim expression. Vorador nodded once.

"Eventually." He repeated and raised a hand to flick a talon. "But eventually can be a very long time." Turning he looked back over his shoulder. "I trust Ajatar has the matter in hand?"

Ansu nodded as Raziel came by. His eyes tracked the blue wraith with a quizzical expression but he made no comment.

"We are no match for the entire Hylden nation in a direct confrontation, but the grandmaster will keep her attention on them." The winged ancient remarked "We will have advance warning of any attack at the very least."

Vorador nodded once sharply in approval. Even with their leaders gone, the Hylden were still a powerful threat not to be underestimated. All that kept them from beginning their quest to destroy all other races in Nosgoth was their complete disorganisation.

Unexpectedly the green ancient turned to look at Raziel, who by now was over by the fire place staring into the flames.

"Raziel, where do you go now?" He asked in a polite but curious tone. That was a good question. With Janos Audron freed from captivity, the plot of the priest Ishtar thwarted and allies safe from harm for the moment at least; what was there left to do now?

It was indeed a good question but was it was almost a very simple one to answer. Indeed there was only thing to do now.

"To correct another of my mistakes." He replied and promptly left the fortress that very same night.

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**_"And so I journeyed north, through the frozen wastes of Nosgoth's mountains to the sunken ravine which housed a cavern known to humans as The Oracle's cave._**

**_._**

Briefly on his way north he surveyed the Human Citadel and saw that with the Hylden gone, withdrawn back to their newly settled country in the east, the humans had spread out to claim a large chunk of the Melchiahim and Dumahim territory. They had retained control over the Sanctuary of the clans and had torn down all the old clan banners from the structure. Over that Raziel had only the mildest irritation.

North from there was the empty city of the Dumahim, still in relatively good condition despite being abandoned and home to only a scavenging vampires. In the canyons beyond the city, leading up into the mountains was a large valley where a door opened into the depths of the earth. It was open now to the almost perpetual snow that blanketed the mountains.

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**_"Here, Moebius the time streamer had played the part of the soothsayer when Kain had sought him out on his quest to murder the Circle of Nine. Beyond this was the Chronoplast device, the greatest of the time streaming chambers in Nosgoth."_**

**_._**

The last time Raziel had come here it had been in pursuit of Kain. He had followed him down into the ancient device and then back through time itself, not aware that this had been Kain's intention from the start. Raziel did not pretend he knew how to work the machine but it was his only means of doing what he needed to do.

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**_"And of course, as I had anticipated, she was there waiting for me." _**

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He was not at all surprised as, when he approached the cavern entrance, he saw a lone feminine figure standing in the archway of stone watching him come. Being the only Hylden that might be called 'attractive', it could be only one person.

"Hello Seer." He called to her, even before she had come fully into sight. She smiled at him warmly and her happiness seemed not to be forced at all.

He supposed, now, he knew why.

"You are prompt, my messiah." She said, clearly having been expecting him. "Are you ready to begin your new quest?"

"New quest?" He feigned ignorance anyway to test her. She looked at him with disapproval but her lips twitched in an ironic smile.

"Come now, we both know what it is." She said. "Don't make me repeat the obvious."

She stepped aside and beckoned him to follow her inside. As it was very cold and the snow almost knee deep outside, Raziel did just that. These caverns had once been used by Turelim as a sanctuary but most of them had migrated away. He could smell and hear only a few in the deeper tunnels.

"Kain still lives." The seer said as they came down a tunnel with a steep incline.

"And I suppose I am the only one who can find him." Raziel asked with ironic condescension.

"Indeed you are." She said back in the same tone. Raziel looked sidelong at her as they walked.

"You goaded Divus, my past incarnation, into fighting me to convince me of it." He said, only just coming to that conclusion himself.

She drew in a deep breath and let it out, clapping her hands together in front of herself.

"Well done." She said. "You've grown quite quick witted."

"I have to be to ensure I am not manipulated." Raziel said, turning his head to look at her sidelong. The silence was maintained for a moment before he carried on. "For instance, I have noticed something very peculiar."

The Seer looked up at the ceiling as they walked, smiling a sort of weary grin.

"Oh? And what's that?" She asked, her voice beginning to echo as they entered a large vaulted chamber; the very same chamber where Moebius had entertained the gullible pilgrims that sought the advice of the oracle. That tripod was still there, as well as the badly rusted iron pot that hung from its centre.

Beyond it was the doorway that led down to the true complex and the large expanse of the Chronoplast.

Here Raziel stopped and looked at sharply, standing just in front as if to bar her way with his body. His entire demeanour had changed to a severe posture, eyes narrowed and brow drawn down.

"That I've never heard anyone give a name when referring to you." He said decisively never taking his eyes from her face. "Even Vorador simply calls you 'the Seer'."

The Hylden woman continued smiling although there was something of a small twitch to the side of her mouth.

"What good would knowing my real name do you anyway?" She asked spreading her arms in a supercilious manner, gesturing to dismiss the matter as not important. Her poker face was nowhere near as good as Moebius' had been and Raziel knew instantly that he was right in his suspicions.

"Oh it would do me the world of good." He began slowly, stepping in front of her fully to make his intentions quite clear. They were not going on until this matter was resolved. "It makes me understand."

The Seer did not immediately react but she tended to lean away from him. He had not, after all, greeted her cordially upon their first meeting and she seemed not to have forgotten that.

"Before he died, Ishtar accused me working for someone he called Princess Damkina." Raziel spoke the name slowly, letting the echo die away before he carried on. "He thought I was a tool used by this potentate to remove the various political enemies she might face if she were to assume control over the Hylden."

The silence between them dragged on for a long time after this, broken only by the sound of dripping water coming from somewhere deep in the cavern system around them.

The Seer did not waver meeting his gaze but eventually he saw something of a wry acceptance come into her eyes. Her smile widened and then she looked down at the ground almost sheepishly.

"And he was right, wasn't he?" Raziel concluded, letting out his breath and letting his posture relax.

With something of an amused chuckle at being manipulated again, he shook his head and mentally kicked himself for being so blind to have not seen this first. He was not angry for the misdirection for it had cost him nothing despite a bit of pride and found that, given everything he had been through, he could let it slide.

He stood aside, beckoning with a hand for her to carry on with him to the Chronoplast.

"A pleasure to meet you, Damkina." He said with a short bow.


	32. Vortex

The large, engraved double doors swung open with a loud familiar creaking; permitting entrance to the ancient buried device that was the Chronoplast chamber. This place housed a machine that could bend space and time to the will of its user. Moebius' smaller chambers were pale imitations in comparison to this marvel of chronological engineering.

Since Kain had found it, Raziel supposed that he had kept it in good condition to preserve it for when he needed it most. In his absence, the chamber had a thin layer of dust settling over the arcane machinery that puffed out as the door swung inward.

Raziel stepped forward, his eyes going immediately up to the far side of the chamber and the focus of the entire device; the very portal that led back or forward through time.

It had been through that very portal, he could now recall, that Divus had cast the near mortally wounded Kain; to float into the ether of chaos that exists beyond causality. He caught himself there, realising this was not the first time he had referred to his past incarnation as simply Divus. He must not forget that the two of them were not two separate people but rather one and the same. He must not forget, lest he be doomed to repeat those sins of his previous lives, human and vampire both.

Beside him, the Seer seemed solemn and contemplative as she surveyed the room her eyes noting the state of the many dials that ringed the walls of the chambers many tiers.

He tried to use her real name, Damkina, when thinking of her but she had been simply 'the Seer' for so long that it seemed too odd in his mind.

"My father is…" She began unexpectedly and then paused as if to check her words. Raziel turned to look at her. "…was, the last king of the Hylden." She looked him directly in the eye. "You knew him as Hash,Ak,Gik."

Raziel was silent as he digested this, deciding what merit he should give to its implications.

The daughter of the entity responsible for the corruption of the Circle of Nine was something of a strange potential ally indeed and it did nothing to bolster his confidence in her trustworthiness. But he supposed that she was at least being truthful about it, coming out and telling him to his face rather then omitting it from their conversation.

"He came to power believing that Ba'al Zebur the first guardian of the pillar of balance, killed his father; my grandsire, in cold blood." The Hylden woman carried on explaining. "He was filled with wrath for what the vampire had done and so pushed the war aggressively against the winged zealots." She spoke without rancour but from the twitch at the side of her mouth Raziel could tell that her neutrality was forced. This he could forgive her for, as the Hylden species as a whole had no reason to forgive the vampires for starting the ancient war.

"But you see, I knew the truth." Her tone became low, almost indistinct. "I knew that Ba'al and my grand sire, Ashar, had not been enemies but allies; striving to find some way of giving our people common ground on which to build."

Raziel turned to look at her a sidelong glance but did not interrupt her narrative

"My grandsire had been killed by Ba'al, not in an act of murder, but at his own request. He died so that his blood might give birth to an artefact that would protect his kin and ensure their survival. The Nexus Stone itself."

She shook her head.

"I tried to tell my father this but he would not listen to me. For my even having considered it he declared me a traitor and had me shunned, ignored by my people even if I were to walk amongst them."

The blue wraith pondered just how much of that story was true and how much was a story spun to induce sympathy.

"If that is so, why do you think they will even look at you now, never mind let you lead them?" He asked, striding out into the very centre of the room and looking around him.

The Seer smiled and laughed once, following him.

"Because they have never been without a strong leader or set of leaders before." She explained. "My people, despite our great advances in science and technology, are not free thinkers. We have always followed a ruling elite and without that elite, there is chaos."

For that the Hylden woman appeared quite pleased, something she had expected to happen evidentially.

"They will be willing to let anyone, even one shunned such as myself, restore order." And there of course was the intention behind her willingness to help him find Janos, despite Audron having been the one to lock her away in the Eternal Prison. With the heads of the houses the only ones who knew where he was being held, it was almost a certainty that Raziel would track them down and that those confrontations might become violent.

Apparently she could see the train of thought in his eyes and turned to speak to him directly.

"My people have been blinded by the poison of hatred for eons." She said and her voice was firm, confident and insistent. "It has to stop. If using you to ensure this means I had to deceive you into murdering my opposition then I apologise." Then she straightened, standing proud and tall with her chin held high. "But I do not regret it in the least."

A long moment of silence past between them, Raziel's attention now directly on her stern and unwavering face. The dust around them continued to shift, drifting lazily to settle back down to the ground.

Eventually Raziel drew in a breath and put his hands on his bony hips.

"There are many similarities between you and Moebius." He said flatly and the Hylden woman stiffened with an indignant look on her face. "You both lie, you both mislead, you both misdirect and you both use others for your own purposes." Here he stopped, looking down at the floor between his feet.

He had come to a decision about her. Moebius had hid his intentions from him easily enough, but not his character. Raziel had known him for a snake the moment he had set eyes on him.

The Seer was not a snake.

"But unlike Moebius, you do it for the benefit of others and not just out of despicable self interest."

On many things the Seer was a mystery to him, but of this he was quite certain he had judged her as a being of integrity.

At this seeming blessing the Seer brightened perceptively, smiling on the world full of great good will. He was after all, her messiah.

Deciding that now he had to get down to business, Raziel jerked his head up in the direction of the lifeless gate at the back of the room; waiting to be activated again and open a rift in time.

"Now, let us go drag Kain's fat out of the fire."

The seer set to work at once, clearing the controls of dust and moving the large levers into place; the machinery around them responding with resonating clunks.

As she works, Raziel tried in vain to determine how the Chronoplast worked. He was able to follow the clockwork that operated the levers easily enough but the energy they were building up seemed to come from nowhere.

The massive armillary like structure high above them seemed to be channelling it somehow but the means it used to accomplish this escaped him.

Something occurred to him then as he watched the events unfold, this time without a battle distracting him.

This chamber was of neither ancient Vampire nor Hylden construction and it was highly unlikely Moebius built it if they had not. Rather he had applied his symbol to the structure when he had claimed it.

But if this was truly the case, then who had built this device?

"Divus threw him into the ether, the void between and outside of time." The Seer said, sliding a lever to the right on the middle tier. "It is a realm of no place and no time."

Raziel was not a good enough philosopher to debate with her on matters of quantum mechanics and so he made no comment on that. "I know of how to set this machine so that you can follow him."

That however caught his attention.

"Even if I find him in this realm, how am I to get out again once I do?" He asked, coming up the stairs to where she was working.

With a grunt of effort she pushed the lever into place and it responded with a resonating clunk, the symbol to which she set it emitting a faint glow. All around them the Chronoplast sputtered and groaned, the energy beginning to build with a resounding hum. Above them the armillary was beginning to turn, slowly at first as it began it process of charging power.

The seer turned to him and smiled.

"With this." She held out her hand to him, palm up. Above her hand there was a short illumination, a parting glow and then there rested in her grasp, improbably, the Nexus Stone.

Raziel recoiled from it, backing up several steps in his alarm. "You needn't fear." The seer assured him quite quickly. "Only one with knowledge of its enchantment can invoke its power to hurt you. I have never had an opportunity to even study it until now."

She held out the stone to him and he stared at it as if an instrument of doom. Could he take it? What would happen if he so much as laid a finger on it?

"How did you get that away from Vorador?" He asked instead.

Around them the chamber was beginning to buzz with power, the low groan of building power.

The seer took his hand and then gently placed the stone into it. Raziel shivered at the contact, still expecting his physical body to explode but nothing happened, he even held it for a few moments staring at it.

"He gave it to me." The Hylden woman said. "It is, after all, my birthright." He looked up at her with a quizzical expression. She shrugged. "Vorador and I have something of a cordial history."

Since Raziel did not have any pockets he used its jagged insect leg like edges to clip it onto his clan drape, as he had seen Ishtar do. It seemed very out of place on his ruined form and carrying it made him feel intensely uncomfortable.

"When you find Kain, give him the stone." The seer advised, looking up at the armillary overhead. It was spinning faster and faster, almost ready to discharge its bolt to the portal. "He will know how to use its power to open a gateway back to the material world."

It was; he was forced to admit, a good plan. There was however one obvious flaw in it.

"If I do not find Kain, you leave me stranded with an artefact I can not use." He said, tapping the jade gem in the centre of the jewellery. He had no notion of how to use its magic and even if he did, he was fairly sure using it would invoke that same draining power and possibly kill him.

"Then I suppose you will just have to be sure that you do find him." Was all she said in reply, before the armillary erupted forth its bolt of energy. It crackled through the air like a writhing snake before impacting the portal and stirring it to life. The gateway elongated, pushing out before collapsing in on itself again; folding back into a tunnel of light. The last time Raziel had seen it opened, the portal had been a soft white. Open to the ether, it was blood red and seemed to him to be like looking down the throat of hell.

"You'll just have to trust me on this." The seer said and the stepped aside, leaving the path clear for him to proceed.

Raziel looked between her and the gate for a moment and then with solemn purpose, began his way up the stairs.

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**_"And so I advanced towards the unstable portal, purposely moving step by step towards a gate that led to oblivion, literally."_**

**_._**

The portal hissed and spat at him like boiled water, its energy breaking off into the air around it. Raziel faced it down savagely. He had burned once already in a vortex and was not about to be intimidated by theatrics of another.

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**_"Kain had once asked me, if he was had been hidden on the underside of hell would I have thrown myself into oblivion to pursue him? The irony of this moment was almost palpable. For now I was doing exactly that, not to hunt him down and kill him but to save him."_**

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Tentatively he put a hand forward towards the open rift. Then suddenly there was a suggestion of light off to one side, a faint white glow and he turned to look. When he did, his eyes met those of the ghost who had been with him since he had awakened.

"Raziel!" Ariel began, her ghostly hands reaching out to him. She was right there, inches away from his own face.

He did not recoil or even move, he just stood there looking at her.

"Ariel?" He began slowly, sensing her presence there as surly as if she were flesh and blood beside him.

The ghost relaxed her shoulders, a relieved expression passing over her face. Once again her face flickered back and forth from its restored perfection to the scared bone of corruption. Her long copper hair flowed out behind her as if drifting in water.

"Finally, you can understand me." She said and her voice was less sound as it was though spoken into his own mind. "It has taken many weeks but I have persisted in trying to make you aware of my presence."

He thought back to all the times she had manifested before him, either to guide him or even defend him against serious injury. For a long time he had thought himself hallucinating, an effect of his long imprisonment within the blade of the Reaver. Gradually he had perceived her presence to be more and now it was confirmed beyond all doubt.

"Then it has not just been my imagination? You actually are here with me?" He asked with his thoughts, touching her spirit with his own.

"With you, within you, around you." She added and as if her words unlocked understanding he could feel her, her soul was inside his own. He could actually feel it how that she was taking to him directly. The intrusion was not painful but felt more like a fusion, a welding together like two pieces of iron were made one on a blacksmiths forge. "We are bound together by the pure spirit I offered you in the forge."

That he recalled all too clearly. The spirit forge, now long since buried in the rubble of the ancient citadel, had summoned the souls of all the past balance guardians to culminate in the ultimate element; spirit. The avatar for this force had been the last of them to die, Ariel herself.

The experience of that power passing through his body to enter the Reaver and purify it had been one of the most transcendent experiences he had ever had.

But had she remained there with him, standing there alongside him as he drawn into the sword? The mere idea left him stunned.

"The experience had left me exposed to everything you have done, all your actions laid bare before me for my scrutiny." She said and there was no measure of censure in her voice. "I have seen everything you have seen, heard everything you have heard and felt everything you have felt."

Her projected image, possibly a form only he could see, let her head tilt up to stare off into space.

"I did not think it even possible experience a bound with another soul this strong." Raziel straightened in apprehension.

"Then have I denied you peace?" He asked. "After you were so long a sentinel of the pillars?"

The spirit of the former balance guardian let out a sort, derisive breath in a sigh.

"So long as that parasite that calls itself God awaits for the dead in the underworld like a hungry animal, no one can have peace." She said and Raziel knew that to all too true. The Elder took the souls of those that died, drained off the energy of experience they had accumulated through their lives and sent the spirits back to be reincarnated; like a fisherman casting out his net again.

But even as she spoke he came to another conclusion.

"You were the one who kept me sane." He said, speaking aloud. "You held me above the tide of madness all throughout my imprisonment in the sword."

"What else could I do?" Ariel asked, almost sounding aggrieved. "Watch you suffer for an eternity, unable to even look away?" She shook her head and then looked down the portal before them as if considering the wisdom of crossing that boundary. "Regardless of what some may think, I have a conscience Raziel and I could not do that. Not after I came to know you so well."

Raziel had never once had someone he had called a partner, or a companion. Janos had been a supporter yes but no one had stood by him step by step; until now. He had not needed such companionship before and would have spurned it had anyone offered, but her presence with him had done more than just benefit him in overcoming tasks and hardships but her provided him with a measure of mental strength that he would never had had on his own.

Her spirit turned her head to look at him directly, her face now restored and her pale violet eyes were on him.

"And I want to carry on helping you stand, free of the circle of destiny." She looked down, drew in a deep breath and then looked up again. "If you will have me?"

Raziel stared at her.

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**_"I said nothing. Instead I reached out and offered her my hand, a repetition of that same gesture I had made when she had purified the Reaver. That touch had bound us once before and now it did so once again. With her by my side, a partner I had had without ever knowing, I willingly stepped through the door into nothingness." _**

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**_The paths of Raziel and Kain intertwine once more before the gate of heaven, coming soon; Legacy of Kain: Absolution_**

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More of an open end this time around? Hmm, yet and I like to end this one on a pleasing note. Once again, stay around for the upcoming sequel Absolution. And now, mostly likely that won't be the end either. This story go on long time!

I intend the do the following; a return to Meridian, the plight of the werewolves, the nature of the Scion of Balance explained, a return of Umah and the fall of Divus. Any of that sound good?

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So please, my reviewers I have questions for you that I would love for you to answer;

1) What places from previous games would you like to see revisits? (willendorf, dark eden etc)

2) Any one have theories on how the Elder can either be defeated for good or killed?

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Note: Just to make it clear, the Ariel summoned to the spirit forge at the end of Defiance was the Ariel from the time of clans and Kain's empire; meaning that if Raziel was to go back to the pillars her spirit would still be there as it had not yet been summoned. **_(PARADOX)_**

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Babylon references: All Hylden in this story were named after gods from Babylonian mythology; Ishtar, Marduk, Shamash, Damkina.

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Lok References:

Sally: Anyone who's read my earlier LOK fanfic will know her. I revised her concept and put her back in. Original, aren't I? Will there be other revamped stuff from my earlier work in this ongoing series? More then likely.


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